Sky Blue, Ocean Blue
by purplegirl761
Summary: When a reformed mad scientist befriends a stranger to Earth who's also haunted by the past, neither of them suspects that their blossoming relationship will carry them through everything from ice cream to intergalactic warfare. Welcome aboard a little ship I like to call Drakkis.
1. Meeting

**~Okay, I know this probably seems supremely weird, but if you'll just give it a chance. . .**

 **I'd list the reasons why I ship this, but I'm hoping you'll be able to figure it out from this and the following chapters. If you're really dying to know, I can PM you. :) Updates will probably be short and sporadic, because I've got two other stories going at the time, so I won't post a chapter until the next one is finished.**

 **Steven-wise, this is an AU between Ocean Gem and The Message. KP-wise, this takes place after the finale and features a reformed Drakken. And it's not really meant to be anything more than a series of cute little snippets.**

 **At the time I wrote this chapter, the last Steven Universe episode aired was Chille Tid. There may be some inconsistencies as more about the Gems is revealed.**

 **I'll shut up and let you read now. ;)~**

"Excuse me, Miss?"

You aren't sure if this is directed at you. As a matter of fact, you are not even entirely sure where you are. Behind you is the ocean, so familiar you find comfort in even the fiercest waves. Before you…you have no clue.

This frightens you.

And the being looking down at you – she looks concerned.

No. Not _she_. This creature has a mysterious, inexplicable _something_ that marks it the strange variation known as a "man," which is apparently common to most species.

Including your own now, for all you know. For how long you've been away.

Beyond that, you cannot tell what he – that is the right word for men? "He"? – is. His skin is blue, a few shades lighter than yours, coloring not typical of humans, but it's too lopsided to be a Gem. The flesh is pale, sky-colored, while the hair and eyes are deep, dark, black.

There is a strange, exotic crack down the man's face. Has to be a human. Your kind would retreat into your gems until such an imperfection is healed. It is so odd, so unlike anything you have ever seen, that your fingers tingle with curiosity. What must it feel like?

His hair is shorter than the human they called Greg's but worn in much the same style, cut short in the front to save all the shagginess for the back. It could be the night sky captured in Gem shards, but…softer-looking, somehow.

And he is concerned for you.

It is a strange expression, bunching up one large eyebrow like a furry, tamed Centibeetle. Made all the stranger by the shiny, cobalt garment that reaches over his shoulders and contains his long torso and short legs. You assume it is some sort of bathing costume. Last time you were on this planet, humans went swimming bare.

This is a marked improvement.

"Miss? Uh…Miss Blue Lady?" The man speaks hesitantly. "Are you…are you all right? Do you need me to call someone?"

Call? You look around for a communication device. They've changed so much, though, that you aren't sure you would recognize one if you saw it. It's even more frightening.

"You're all wet," the man states. "Did you go swimming in your _clothes_?"

You don't see how your gauzy dress is any more peculiar swimming garb than his stretch of fabric.

"Seriously, do you not _talk_?" The Obsidian eyes are wide with worry. "Do you have the bends or something? Here – I'll dry you off!"

Before you can explain that you can shed water with a simple flick of your body, he's already gone. Back across the sand, adding cries of "Ouch!" where it burns his weak human feet.

He returns with a cloth the same hue as his swimming garment and extends his arms to wrap it around you.

You draw back – so few have touched you with kindness in the last thousands of years.

The man notices your cringe remarkably soon for a creature so clearly not the type who would keep a clear head in times of peril. He instantly retracts his hand to his side, and you notice for the first time – he is bigger than you, much – but his hands are almost as small as yours. They fidget nervously at his sides.

They understand.

"I – I don't need your towel." You talk for the first time. Your voice has a shrill edge you can't quite contain. It sounds angry, sounds – rude, almost, even though you mean to reassure him. You try to correct it with, "See, I can –"

He does not wait for you to finish before he begins. "Well, _I_ think you do." His chin juts. "I mean, you're soaked to the bone."

You blink. Bones are invisible, inner things that even you cannot drench, and this man would have no way of knowing if you did. Not to mention –

"My bones are an illusion," you say. "My whole body is an illusion."

The man's head tilts to one side. "Say wha?"

And yet the look he gives you is accepting. Curious, yes, in the manner the Homeworld Earth Researchers were back in the glory days, but quite benign. As if you are not the most unusual sight he has ever seen.

After several seconds of pacing and muttering, he turns back to you. "Well, let's see if we can get this 'illusion' warmed up before we get all….existential or whatever."

You are surprised that this comes out of the mouth of the same creature who not half a minute before referred to you as a "lostling." It is amusing, hearing this man speak. You can almost enjoy it.

"Everything's going to be all right, Miss." Despite the term of address, the man appears to be talking to himself almost as much as to you. He parts with a nervous smile, and for a moment you are convinced you've found his gems after all, all lined up and shining at you.

"I'm Dr. Drakken, by the way," the man says, tapping the tips of his fingers together.

He has offered his name! He is attempting to make a connection.

You do not feel brave enough to return it with yours. Not yet.

But when he retrieves the soft cloth humans must need for drying, and he drapes it around your shoulders with a light touch and a big, hopeful grin, this time you do not pull away.


	2. Ice Cream

The man called Dr. Drakken leads you down a narrow walkway composed of wooden boards. You cannot quite name what it is that compels you to follow him, something about his energy when the rest of the miserable planet is yawning and thinking about going to…sleep, is it called? The sky is darkening into a color closer to your skin than his, the sun dipping low.

Buildings line the walk-of-boards, some grouped together as if they are standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the field of battle, others recoiling away from each other. Drakken approaches one with a flapped awning which reads, "Ice Cream! 25 Flavors!"

There's a trail of unbecoming saliva at the corners of his mouth.

Drakken barters a green paper for an object the likes of which you have never seen before. The bottom part is a cone – you recognize that much. Topping it is a thick swirled substance just a few sandy shades off pure white.

Like the rivers on – oh, which planet did they use for Kindergarten Base 13? The ones you couldn't manipulate because they flowed with something other than water?

It was a strange place. You felt powerless. You were glad when it fell.

The substance narrows toward the top until it winds into a small curlicue. Perfect in form. Rather pretty in design.

Drakken ushers you toward a table, shaded by canvas from the heat of the setting sun. He pulls out a chair for you and waits with his strange tied-back hair standing fully on end until you lower yourself onto it. Must be an Earth custom.

You know nothing of it, but it was clearly a polite gesture.

That's when you realize it's not the energy drawing you, nor the sameness of your hues, nor the mystery of his cracked cheek. This man has a decency you've encountered very little in the past few millennia.

Once.

Courtesy of a small man named Steven.

Drakken is not Steven, of course. He is – he is – you cannot guess at a number, since humans age so strangely, but he is grown. The energy, the decency, the quick smile and full head of hair – those, however, remind you so much of the only friend you have now.

It immerses you in tiny currents, that you wish to reciprocate the connection. "My name is Lapis," you say. "Lapis Lazuli."

His eyes do some peculiar thing where they appear to brighten from inside – not in color, in mood. "That's pretty." He licks at the swirl atop his cone. "It's a rock, isn't it?"

You bristle a little. _Rock_ is such a coarse, blunt word, dropping clumsily from the mouth, never capturing a Gem's intricate facets. "It's a Gem," you correct him.

Drakken chuckles, a sheepish sound, his shoulders rolling. "Oh. Sorry. I'm no geologist."

 _Geo_ means Earth; you remember that from your Teachings on Homeworld. And _logos_ has something to do with studying….so, "one who studies the Earth." Gems must occur on this planet, too, though you doubt they're the sentient variety.

Drakken abruptly smacks the palm of his hand, thankfully the unoccupied one, against his forehead. "Oh, fiddle-faddle!" he cries. "I didn't even ask if you wanted a cone! What kind of gentleman _am_ I?"

You cannot answer. You have never met one of any kind.

"Do you like ice cream?" He asks the question like the answer is foregone, holding the slather of substance out to you. The whitish part on top is melting in the heat.

"I don't know. I've never had it."

Drakken's jaw drops as if you have confessed to having not seen the Galaxy Warp. "You've never had _ice cream_?" he gasps.

You shake your head. You know _ice_ , and indeed this swirly mush wilts under the sun's gaze in much the same way. You know _cream_ , and you can see a resemblance in texture. But together…together they create something foreign.

That's when you remember that he is a mere human and knows nothing about your species. "I don't need to eat," you reassure him.

Lines pucker his forehead. "Sure you do," Drakken says. "You're skinny."

You wonder what this has to do with eating.

And yet you cannot stand being the cause of his worry. You've never been comfortable making trouble. Some call it "making waves," an expression that has never seemed fitting to you – because _those_ you greatly enjoy making.

"We feed on the energy at the heart of the universe," you say.

Drakken points the twirled end of the substance he calls ice cream at you. "Does that give you enough dairy?"

Unsure how to answer, you grasp at the cushion beneath you, which is leaking white puffs that must have once been a plant product.

"Do you want to try some, at least?" Drakken asks. The ice cream cone is suddenly beneath your nose, and you can smell the cold rising from its peak like a mountain.

There are many gaps in your knowledge of humans, but you can imagine that sharing one's food is a very kind gesture, particularly when a human is so obviously fond of the confection he's holding.

 _Accept a gift graciously, even when it is not needed._

That's somewhere in the back of your homesickness.

You nod, lean your body forward to brace your hands on the table, and free a drop that was about to dribble onto the wide lip of the sand-colored cone anyway. Your tongue, only accustomed to being used for speech, wiggles it back and forth, trying to figure out what to do with it.

And…wow!

The taste is subtle, yet full, one bite seeming to fill your entire mouth. It is sweet. Fresh. Cool and moist like an energizing breeze. You close your eyes to let it linger, open them again when it's finally faded away.

"It's…good," you say.

You cannot help smiling.

Drakken's shoulders shake again. The broadest spans bounce out of rhythm with the rest of them in a way that suggests they are _synthetic_ – a word you were Taught on your return to Homeworld.

"Want some more?" he asks. His body practically radiates satisfaction.

This time, you shake your head no. The back of your throat still needs to adjust to the cool, sleek texture now dribbling down it. "Not yet."

Drakken nods as if he understands, although he still seems puzzled around the eyes. "So, what…who…are you?" He gestures with the cone, a dollop of ice cream landing on the streaked table.

"I'm a Gem," you say, hesitating between words. It's been eons since you've had to explain what that means to someone; you are out of practice.

And you are apparently not doing a very good job, because Drakken's eyebrow knots. "No," he says. "That thing on your back is a gem. _You_ are…a…?"

Your mind searches out every image you have been exposed to, an automatic function of those once condemned to communicate only through playback, but one that is useless now.

You tilt your head back and look at the sky. The sun is leveling closer and closer to the planet's flat horizon, painting the sky in deep shades of Jasper-orange and Amethyst-purple. As beautiful as it is, it cannot compare to the splendor of the same sight from Homeworld. But when you went back, you discovered they'd built a signal tower right on the very spot where you most loved to watch the sunset.

"I _am_ the thing on my back," you say. "Everything I am stems from it."

Drakken pauses. He licks. He says, "So, you're not from around here, are you?"

"No." Your voice is almost a whisper. "I'm from Homeworld. I don't know what its name is on this planet."

You try not to sneer when you pronounce _this planet_. It could be nice, in its own way, you suppose; it will just always be inferior to your home.

Drakken lowers the cone slowly. "You mean, you're like an alien?"

"Technically." You have no fondness for the word _alien_ , either. It makes you sound like a savage being, an outsider, rather than a member of a proud, established race that has been around longer than his.

"What about you?" you ask, hoping to steer the talk away from Homeworld. Recalling the technoport it has become hurts you too badly, as does the distant picture of the way you left it, faded and worn from being taken out and gazed at so often. "You're a human – I didn't know blue was one of the colors they could be."

He grins with something halfway between pride and embarrassment, another human trait you recognize from the one called Greg. "Lab accident," Drakken says. "It was messy."

"Oh." You shiver involuntarily. _Lab_ – yet another word that is all too familiar from your recent return. Those stainless buildings are cold inside and out, and they scrape against your memory of a more carefree, innocent place where Gems cared for one another.

And though this Dr. Drakken does not seem like the type to conduct those cold experiments, you remind yourself that you have only known him for thirty Earth minutes.

Drakken glances up toward the sky and squints, taking a long, strung-out lick from his cone. "I have a friend – well – more like an enemy – well, an old enemy – sort of somewhere between enemy and friend – anyway, he's a rocket scientist. I could get you a rocket! Do you need a rocket?"

You find yourself staring. You never realized that ideas, even in a form only halfway completed, could come so rapidly to humans. If he were one of your kind, these sloppy sentences would be the Advantages Drakken pulled out of his gem.

It's almost a pity that you have to refuse him. You hadn't realized the corners of your lips had tweaked up at this man's babbling until now, when they fall again.

"No," you say. "I went back, and everything's…different now. I was gone for thousands of years. They have new technology that I don't know how to use, the land isn't familiar anymore, and no one….no one even remembered who I was."

It's Drakken's turn to shudder, with a deep "ewwww" like he has accidentally touched the scientific gelatin stored inside those Homeworld labs, and somehow you understand it is meant in sympathy.

His fingers twitch on the table as he crunches into the cone itself, which you weren't aware was even edible. The thumb in particular traces the same circle around and around, over and over. Could it be that there is something he wants to say? For a second, it looks as though there is, and then he shakes himself and it disappears.

"Wait a second," Drakken finally says, seeming more uncomfortable with silence than with sitting in the presence of a creature from another planet. "If you don't have a rocket, how did you get back home?"

You blink. The question sounds utterly ridiculous, as if he has asked how fish can breathe without lungs. "Well, I just used my…"

And then, there it is – the reason behind the question. The frail human anatomy, you realize, needs rockets to fly as much as they need food to stay powered.

You divert your eyes down to your knees. "This might be a little strange," you tell Drakken. "I don't think humans can do this. So – I don't want you to be afraid."

When you peek back up, his face is appreciative.

Taking a deep breath, you loosen your muscles and let your wings unfurl from your gem. There is a tension, a drawing-out as they break through, then a magnificent feeling of wholeness as they reach their full length to sparkle in what you're pretty sure is known as "twilight."

You chance looking at Drakken again. His jaw is hanging down almost to reach his chest, gaping in sheer awe.

And, even as you watch, bright yellow flower petals pop from his neck to bloom in a fluffy halo around his face.

Drakken's cheeks, the smooth one and the strikingly cracked one, turn rosy pink. But he otherwise does not appear to be embarrassed as he points to the petals you _know_ are not natural for humans and says, "Another lab accident."

You giggle, a sound rendered unfamiliar to you for so long. One you rediscover you like.

By now, the planet has turned its back to the sun entirely, darkening the neighborhood until a few electric lights, the ones humans must have finally discovered while you were…away, buzz on. Humans wander down the path, some of them rubbing at eyes that exhaust so easily.

Including _your_ human. Dr. Drakken crunches the sandy cone itself between his front teeth – so _it_ is edible, too? Amazing.

He's saying something, but you don't quite catch what. You are attempting to decide whether one small lick of ice cream necessitates shapeshifting an entire digestive system, and it is taking all your concentration.

Finally you hear, "Well, I guess I better get back to the hotel." Dr. Drakken's lips stretch backward and his throat produces a single, billowing note. "There's a marathon of _The Love Boat_ on tonight, anyway."

 _Marathon_?

He makes the throat-noise again, accompanied by a slow blink, and you recognize fatigue. And the way his body has turned slightly to the left, feet already lifted to pace away.

He's leaving.

It's not fear you feel, not the narrow slant of the ground below you or the ugliness of forgetting you are not frozen to it. It's a pulling-inward, an empty kind that reminds you that you aren't bound by gravity the way these limited creatures are, a lonesome superiority.

Dr. Drakken's eyebrow twists suddenly. "Do you have someplace to sleep?" he asks.

It's the wrong question, but it's asked out of care.

"I don't need to sleep," you say.

His expression suddenly takes on an intelligence you wouldn't have expected from him. "You know, I used to think that, too, that I could just keep on going and going forever and ever, but Shego said I couldn't, and she turned out to be right, because one day I caught my lab coat on fire and then…"

Drakken's voice trails off. Your brain is now suspended somewhere between the twin confusions of _Shego_ and _lab coat_. "Oh," he says, coughing a little. "You – you really don't need to sleep? Because you're a Gem?"

You are somewhat surprised he put this together. You nod.

"Oh," Drakken repeats. "Well…do you have someplace to _rest_ , at least?" His fingers rub the front of his bathing costume. His gestures are warm. "I have a room at the hotel. I – I could get another one for you. I brought my debit card."

There's so very little in that that makes sense to you. "Room?" Of course, you know very well what a _room_ is, but not in this context, not around terms such as _hotel_ and _debit card_.

"Yes," he says. "I'd offer to let you share mine, but there's something weird about that."

The pink spreads across his cheeks again.

You are tempted – where do they sleep, and how? Is there a special place they have to be? Do they need to prepare in any way? Does it require effort or does it come as naturally as the sea comes to your control? Yet you hesitate to impose.

"No," you say. "No, I'm fine."

"Do you have someplace _safe_?" Drakken's voice pitches higher, almost a shout. He is near panic.

For you? He fears for _you_?

You work your mouth slowly. It's smiling, somehow, and almost stupefied in gratitude. "I'm always safe when I'm near the ocean."

"Ohhhhh." Drakken moves one hand from the bagging fabric around his waist to stroke his chin with it. "You have ocean powers?" He doesn't even give you the chance to answer – "That's cool. I have plant powers.

"High five!" he cries and turns that hand so it hovers expectantly in the air.

You furrow your forehead.

Drakken pulls his hand back in and stares at it. "Why does no one ever give me a high five?" he says, as if he is not really expecting a solution to his dilemma, so why even ask?

"How does it work?" you say. You don't like the disappointment on his face, and you wish to banish it from him.

The wish is granted. Drakken comes alive, illuminated like a constellation, and raises both hands above his head. "You slap hands," he says, demonstrating by bringing his together. "Only, you know, it's you and another person. Or Gem. Or any other dextral creature." He seems to possess great knowledge as he leans toward you, the knowledge of the Teachers. "It's called 'high' because you do it in the air and 'five' stems from having five fingers."

He glances at your fingers as if to reassure himself you do, indeed, have five. "And it's generally more successful if you both use the same hand. Otherwise, your fingers sort of just – just – SKOOOSH! Right between each other." He acts out whatever "SKOOOSH" entails, looping his fingers in circles around each other.

You find him very fun to watch.

Right now, however, your attention is drawn to your hand. Even though you could have an almost infinite number of fingers at your disposal if you chose, five is the most effective construction the Gems have discovered so far. The lines on your palm, grooves human use to grasp and to hold better, are faint and flex as you open it wider.

Dr. Drakken's breath, smelling of cold and sweetness, breathes down on your hair. Even with his noisy, clumsy movements, his presence has managed to startle you.

He takes your hand delicately in his and bends your fingers out slightly with his bony blue ones that are almost identical, only a little longer. "Did you know that every human being has different fingerprints?" he says. "If you had a microscope, you could identify anyone in the world by that pattern alone."

Drakken's eyes are intelligent again, glowing with a profound delight he is happy to share.

"But mine…aren't real," you start to say.

He gives them a tap and then, thankfully, releases them. "I bet they're still unique, though," he tells you. "Just for you."

Drakken's grin outshines the meager electric bulbs. (Have they not even switched to fluorescents yet?) He bids you a "Good night," and starts to walk away, glancing back over his synthetic shoulders every few inches.

You turn and wade into the ocean, the water lapping at your ankles in welcome, breathing on your skin. Instantly, you are secure and serene and every step you take farther from shore loosens you. You are no one's prisoner now.

Dr. Drakken must be able to see that, because his grin grows and he – you think the word is "waves," because his wrist flaps the way your ocean does when it's stirred into foam. "By the way – were you really gone for thousands of years?" he calls to you.

"Yes."

"Wow." Drakken shakes his head, the spikes poking every which way like brambles and twigs. "And they say _I_ look young for my age!"

Then he is gone, in a series of quick skitters up the beach.

You sigh and sink to the sandy bed, legs stretched in front of you. The water here is sharper than the kind you would find in lakes and rivers, rich with a mineral humans call "salt," its scent and touch so close. So unchanging.

Instead of looking up to locate the home planet you can no longer feel kinship with, you burrow your hands into the sand and let the salt water course over them. This Dr. Drakken – he has been kind to you. He's spoken to you, even though it has to have been obvious from the start that this is not where you belong. He has given you food that you didn't need, imparted human knowledge with a wonder the Teachers used to have.

And now he has seen you off to safety.

You wish you had a gift for him, but what do you even own? Everything you ever had was back on Homeworld, and has probably long been redistributed by now, centuries and centuries after your disappearance.

When you bring your hands up, they are speckled with grains, decorated with bits of shell, strands of seaweed woven between your fingers.

For some reason, though, all you are truly aware of are your fingerprints.

* * *

When Dr. Drakken squeaks open the door to Room 106 the next morning, a scrap of paper lies right outside, weighed down by the most beautiful seashell he's ever seen. The perfect size to hold up to his ear, and spotted with brown and white like a beagle.

The note says, in wispy cursive that can only belong to the little pixie he met on the beach, _Thank you, Dr. Drachen, for your kindness._

That's not how his name is supposed to be spelled, but he's happy as the proverbial clam anyway.


	3. Mirror

**~To whoever's been reading - thanks for being willing to give this a try. :)**

 **STANDARD DISCLAIMER: At the time I wrote this, the most recent episode was "Friend Ship." I tried to be deliberately vague when recounting details of the War, but it may still be contradicted as canon expands.**

 **It may also give you the feels.~**

"Lapis!"

You turn around. Though the early morning light blocks much of the figure hurrying toward you, you are struck by its lopsided, birdlike run.

It brings a smile to your lips when it does turn out to be Dr. Drakken. He's changed from his swimming garment into what must be the coat for his lab, and it gives him a more confident air. But those are the same soft features and the same tender way of holding his head slightly to one side.

His face is pinker and puffier than when he left you last night. Is this what sleep does to humans? You've never seen one recently awoken before, and you are surprised at how soft and fresh he looks.

Well, fresh save for the flaky crust at the corners of his eyes.

His sloppiness is so foreign and so fascinating.

"Hello, Dr. Drakken," you say.

"It's great to see you again!" he says. Despite the crust, Drakken's eyes are as bright and curious as they were yesterday. "Did you have a good night? Stayed out by the ocean, didn't have any problems?"

You nod.

"Stupendous!" Drakken taps his fingertips together, the unique prints hidden today by black gloves. "Look, I'm still a newbie here myself…just here for vacation."

He gestures to the cluster of shops below you that are just being opened for the day. They're primitive structures, but fairly civilized, all things considered. When you were last here, humans lived in tribes, nasty fragments of populations, always going to war over land ownership or which gods they worshiped, and you were so frightened when their influence on the Crystal Gems became strong enough to lead them to turn against _their_ own kind, as well.

Maybe humans have progressed some since then.

"And I thought it might be fun for the two of us – newbies – to go shopping together?" Drakken suggests.

You aren't familiar with the concept of "shopping," but you enjoy this man's company. And you have been so lonely. You agree.

Drakken's first stop is a furniture store where the walls are lined with high stools and the floors are darkened with scuff marks. Some of the furnishings are appealing – especially the ones that appear to have just washed in from the sea, whitened by the sun and splintered by the waves. But none of them are particularly impressive.

You tilt your head toward Drakken. "So – what's here that's so interesting to you?"

Drakken grins as though he has been waiting for that exact question. "Ah, yes! Right over here!"

He reaches for your hand, then jerks himself away, fingers twiddling again as he realizes he does not need to grab you: his enthusiasm already tethers your own hopeful wonder along in its wake.

In the farthest corner of the store, back a few feet from the display windows, are two huge black chairs, so incredibly padded that you aren't quite sure how to sit down in them. Dr. Drakken plumps right into his, and you follow his lead, though a bit more delicately.

The cushions give beneath you, cupping you like the pillowed trees on Kindergarten Base 17 would – you hated to see those brought down. You squeal a little, and Drakken's hair, caught back at the nape of his neck with a thick band, swings up as if in direct response.

"They're massage chairs!" Drakken says joyfully. He reaches over to the chair's arm and flips a switch. Instantly, his chair comes alive with jolts and vibrations that whir almost alarmingly.

You sink your fingers deep into the folds of your chair's arms, careful not to even bump the switch. "I – I like it the way it is," you say. Chairs have served your people and countless others for many, many years as stationary objects, and you don't feel like changing that today.

"Su-u-u-uit-t-tt yoo-our-rrr-selllll-ff," Drakken stutters. His voice wobbles up and down to the rhythm of the seat.

Pulling your feet up under you, you are content to watch.

"Why do you like those chairs so much?" you ask when you leave.

"Oh, I have a really bad back," Drakken says with a grimace.

You circle around behind him and examine his back. It appears to be a perfectly suitable spine. "How is it bad?" you say.

"Well, the joints and the discs and the vertebrae…" Drakken's hands flutter in midair. "They hurt a lot. You're lucky Gems don't get old."

He squints at you. "You don't get old, do you?"

"No."

"Didn't think so." Drakken's hands move again. Small enough to express even the most intricate emotion, they fling skyward and pluck at nothing. "We humans have to fight the gray hairs and the spread and the aches and pains, while you all just become more distinguished!"

His eyebrow is straight down over his eyes, looking so funny, as if someone smudged it onto his forehead with a piece of wet bark. You suppress a laugh just so you can feel it tickle your stomach.

Drakken's expression storms over further, into something that no longer brings you pleasure. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No, no, no!" you're quick to exclaim. This is another phrase you don't have a concept of, but you can tell it is not a good thing. "No, trust me, I wasn't! How can laughing be an insult?"

Drakken smiles a little, a fleeting curve without teeth. "Trust _me_ , on this planet, it can."

His momentary pain is deeper than you knew had a chance to collect in such a short lifespan.

You are briefly sorry for him. And yet you can tell by the way he says "on this planet," the friendly glance he gives you, that he knows this was not your intent.

And for that, you are grateful.

Next, Dr. Drakken insists on visiting a toy store. Toys, he explains, are given to young humankind to bring them comfort and teach them how to interact with spacial objects.

You recognize a stuffed bear – Steven had one of those, though one darker in color and smaller. And, while you have never kept track of species relationships on Earth, last time you checked, bears and humans didn't always coexist very well. Why would you give a toy in the shape of a predator to a – a – child, are they called? To teach them to be fierce?

No, that can't be. There's resolve in Steven, but no fierceness. He is a nice, sweet young one.

You are surprised to find some of that spirit here. The flashing lights and the loud beeping noises take your mind back to a day when this was the extent of Homeworld's tech.

Drakken is currently leaping back and forth in front of a toy with a motion detector. You've always found those slightly creepy, so you allow yourself to back away a few inches and find yourself looking at a miniaturization of something. Some instrument.

There are Pearl-white, long keys that remind you of Dr. Drakken's teeth. Black, skinnier keys nestle over and between them.

You can't recall the name of it – pictures still rise to you easier than words – but you know they had them back on Homeworld at one time. Distant memories, hologram-like ones that disappear when you try to touch them, unspool, as you release a finger and press it to the white key in the middle.

It expels a single, perfect note.

A shiver zips through you, the good kind. You move one key over, and then another, until you have reached the end and then start over from the beginning. The farther you go to the right, the higher and clearer the notes become; farther to the left, they grow thicker and lower.

 _Music_.

It has been such a long time since you've heard it.

You glance over your shoulder at Dr. Drakken. He's moved on to a robotic wolf of some sort that responds to your commands to sit, much to Drakken's delight. His laugh has the rumble of a cannon-shot, though not the precision or the violence.

Finally, he shows you to a "home furnishings" store, where humans purchase various items – Drakken refers to them as "knickknacks and whatnots," but that's obviously not the technical term – to decorate their dwellings. Framed photographs, abstract paintings, carpet that bends under your feet. These aren't the sorts of things savage barbarians collect, are they?

Steven's house was certainly more welcoming than anything left on Homeworld when you returned.

Your attention is especially drawn to a little gray anchor. It's metallic rather than wooden and would look sharp and dangerous were it not for some flakes of charming rust that you poke tentatively at. Yet something about it puzzles you:

"This is too small to hold down a ship. Even a one-passenger canoe would need more than this."

Drakken strokes his chin with sudden wisdom that looks pale from underuse. "That's because it's a fakesy," he says. "It's not meant to be an actual anchor – it's meant to hang on a wall or something. For people who like the beach but can't live near it but want to be reminded of it."

"Oh." You glance back at the anchor. This makes _some_ amount of sense. You understand why those who must live inland would want to keep a token of the sea.

"My interior decorating skills are really being pushed to the limit right now," Drakken continues as he skips ahead. "I'm in the middle of a big move, and I thought, _Wow, how much money could I save if I just hologram-projected all my décor?_ But it turns out it's really expensive to build a hologram projector, plus you can't actually touch it and that's not that great when it comes to furniture…"

His words are like buoys bobbing in the water, cresting and falling, sometimes dipping clumsily below the surface but never ceasing.

You cross over to a low shelf and find yourself at eye level with a reddish-orange chunk, etched with intricate wavy lines that divide it into blobs. The feel of it is tough under your fingers but not stony. Although it is strange to see it above sea level, you recognize it instantly.

The tag resting next to it proclaims it to be "real, non-endangered coral."

Your legs shiver. _Non-endangered_? Last time you were here, reefs were plentiful and provided many fish with the nutrients they need to survive.

Maybe humans are still barbarians, after all.

You shake the thought off the way your projected body can shed water, drop by drop, and scurry over to Dr. Drakken. He is running a finger over several picture frames – wood, metal, plastic – each in turn, awestruck. He sizes up a stool made out of driftwood, fingers forming a square, and then casually dropping into a diamond, as if the shape carries no weight with Earth's citizens.

Right now his buoy-words are saying, "Like me, I live in the Midwest – town called Middleton, to be precise, and there's no ocean there. My first real home since I was eighteen. My former – errr – occupation called for me to be on the move a lot, and it didn't pay to get too attached to any one lair…"

You would ask what a _Middleton_ is or why he stutters when describing the past. But before you can, Drakken comes very close to squealing, cries, "Ooh! Lapis! Look at this!"

He snatches a handled object from the display above his head and holds it up close. Almost immediately, his face distorts, mouth flattened enough to let his pink glistening tongue hang out.

Since he doesn't appear to have been harmed, you realize he's being – what's the term – silly? But why would he bother – unless –

Drakken turns the thing eagerly toward you. The overhead lights beam off its silvery surface and blast your eyes with the glare and the reflection that was once your whole world.

Your own face distorts.

Everything distorts, as though you are shapeshifting without any idea of what you are changing into. Although outwardly your assumed form remains steady, black spots blot at the edges of your vision.

It all comes back.

You watch the proud Galaxy Warp fall into shattered crystals, hear angry voices blare around you, feel everything condense into a knob on your back. Apart from the ocean, you are small and weak.

Your arms claw over each other, nails nicking the flesh – _protect the gem. Protect it at any cost._ When they cannot reach the hollow between your shoulder blades where it's encased, you shrivel inward in a series of shakes. Small, subtle movements that feel big and leave your ears ringing.

Dr. Drakken's deep voice seeps through. "Lapis? Are you all right?"

You shake your head no.

A change comes over him then; you can hear it when he says, "Okay – okay – okay – what is it?" He sounds nervous, almost shrill, but with a determination far stronger than anything else he's shown you so far.

Drakken points at the life-size carving of a fishwoman next to you. "Is it this?"

You shake your head again.

"Is it this?" The driftwood stool – no. "This?" A display of bristly mats like the one Steven had in front of his door – no. "Is it _this_?"

This time, Drakken gestures to the mirror.

This time, you nod.

"Okay. Okay. Getting rid of that." Drakken sets the mirror back on the display shelf and wipes his hands on the seat of his pants. "All right. Let's go…"

He guides his arm in a wide arc around you, gets behind your back without actually touching it, and urges you forward. You half-stumble after him, through a glass-fronted door, out into the open air.

One whiff of the salt breeze coming off the ocean, and you can breathe again. You sit down, hard, on the concrete steps and let your muscles slowly uncoil.

Dr. Drakken lands right next to you, hands dangling awkwardly between his thighs. "Better out here?" he asks. His grin is hopeful.

"Y-yes," you can say. "M-much better. Thank you."

Drakken cocks his head to one side, the forest of hair swinging. "You know, I used to not like mirrors that much, either, because I thought I was really ugly, but I'm over it now."

Ugly?

What are men supposed to look like? Drakken has two eyes, a nose, a nice set of ears…everything the Gems have catalogued as natural for humans.

"But you, though, you're really cute, so I don't see what the problem is," Drakken says. His forehead puckers with the strain of attempting to fathom you, his tone never once straying from its factual reporting.

And that is what loosens your grip on yourself. He wishes to understand, so badly wishes you can see it frustrating him from the inside out. His eyes show none of the judgment the Crystal Gems, other than Steven, were so quick to issue you.

You allow your sigh to quiver and truly release. You concentrate on the spot where the sea meets the horizon.

And then you part your lips, and your whole story comes out.

"Wow," Dr. Drakken says. "Trapped in a mirror. I didn't know that was a thing." This is apparent in the unease of his legs shifting on the steps; in his troubled stare, turned in your direction but clearly aimed at something beyond the both of you; in the genuine way he says, "I'm so sorry."

An apology? An admission of guilt? Does he believe he is to blame?

"You're sorry? But you didn't put me there." You reach over and leave your hand suspended right above his knee.

"What?" Confusion stirs in Drakken's eyes for a moment, then clears. "Oh, no, I know that. I'm just saying that I feel really sad for you."

You pull your gaze from your bare toes and manage a smile for him.

"How'd you get out, then?" Drakken asks.

"My friend Steven." It's the first part of the telling that doesn't hurt. How long has it been since you've had a friend? "He freed me."

"Steven, eh? What's he like?"

"He's…young." You fumble for an estimate, but everything about humanity is compressed into spans too brief for a Gem to measure. "He's – well, how old are you?"

"Forty-two," Drakken says.

Using Drakken's age – old enough to creak but not yet fading – you try to parse it down to Steven's innocent newness. "Then he's probably….ten? Or maybe twenty?"

"How big is he?"

You hold your hand about ninety-six Earth centimeters from the ground to indicate where Steven's tumble of curls stops.

"Hmmm." Drakken's brow creases as he ponders this. "Probably closer to ten, then. Unless he's a midget."

It's not a term you are familiar with, but you are bombarded with the immediate picture of unusually small Gems who need to fuse to be strong.

"I think I'm supposed to ask if he has whiskers now," Drakken continues. "But that's not always the best indicator. I barely have any myself. See?"

He thrusts his chin very close to your nose, so near you can pick out tiny individual wisps of dark hair scattered along his chubby jawline. When your hands go to your own cheeks, you are astonished to feel a very similar layer of down, even finer, and you wonder if it has always been there.

Now you know what to call the stubble like a harvested field that surrounds the human Greg's mouth.

"He's…good," you say. It's such a simple word, childish almost, and yet it is the best summary of Steven. "He's sweet and friendly and laughs at everything. And if you're in pain, he'll know. He'll understand, and he'll…forgive you."

You are abruptly, achingly aware that Steven's healing press against your back was the first time in your millennia of existence that you have been forgiven.

Drakken's spiky head tilts. "Sounds like a neat kid."

"He is." Your arms are limp, somehow weak from the recount, and you drape them across your knees. "So…I'm sorry that I panicked in there."

Drakken lets out a snort, as if he is choking on the gases in Earth's stifling atmosphere. Something humorous and something whimsical do a fusion dance on his face. "Heh – you call _that_ panicking? You should see me sometime!"

"You?" You are confused.

Palms on his legs, Drakken nods again. A thin sheen of sweat is breaking out on his forehead. "I've – I've been in prison, too," he says. "Not in a mirror. In a building. They put bars on the windows and assign you a number and basically forget you're a person."

You quiver in sympathy.

"It's awful, isn't it?" Drakken asks this as though he is not truly expecting an answer. "You come out – well, I don't know about you, but most people can come out pretty mean. You want to hurt the people who put you in there."

Relief invades you, slackening your body further. There is something warm and wise gliding across this man's eyes, and it understands you, even the dark places you would rather not be understood. The anger has felt so dirty for so long.

You return his nod with your own. "And – and – maybe even _more_ – you want to hurt the people who knew you were in there and didn't do anything," you say.

Three faces flash through your mind – purple, firm red, pointy and white. Three faces frozen and shocked, three faces who assumed you were a monster beyond hope.

"Hoo-boy. Yes." Drakken hugs himself and talks practically into his lap. "That's a big one."

It sounds so natural, though he speaks of it without fondness. You are not alone in your disgrace.

You look down at your fingerprints.

"Sometimes – sometimes I have nightmares. I wake up and I'll be all alone in the dark, and I won't remember I'm free," Drakken says.

You cannot relate to _nightmares_ or _waking up_ , but you know of being alone in the dark. No one comes to look at a mirror in the middle of the night.

Suddenly, Drakken is on his feet, grinning an enormous shining grin down at you. "You know what I like to do when that happens? I like to find the biggest, widest-openest space I can and run around in it! There's – I think there's a meadow around here somewhere. You want to go run in a meadow?"

The once-vast fields of Homeworld loom in your mind. A place to which a warp, even a functional one, can no longer take you.

"Yes," you say.

Drakken leads you away from the huddle of shops and down a sandy path to a wide, green expanse dotted sparsely with trees. Sprigs of grass, damp from the early morning mist, are soft and flexible under your feet. The wildflowers are different here on Earth, light shades of blue like Drakken's skin, and soothing lavender. Some have rings of white petals surrounding friendly yellow centers.

You run, legs pumping, heart pounding, through an area with no walls, no confines of any type. The longer blades of grass lash at your heels and your dress lifts and floats in the breeze. The air is sweet, crisp – and Dr. Drakken stays nearby, a benign presence, laughing and rolling on his back down a rise too small to be a hill. His pedals sprout every now and then, and he giggles as he plucks them out.

Eventually, you join him, on your back on the ground, looking up toward the clouds and smiling at his human ritual of imagining shapes in them. Earth, miserable planet that it is, does have quite a bit of potential.

It can never live up to the majesty of Homeworld, although – and perhaps it is traitorous to admit it, even to yourself – you are beginning to prefer the company down here.


	4. Brave

**~Hi! I'm get into some deeper waters (Lapis pun!) here.**

 **At the time I wrote this, the most recent SU episode was _Sadie's Song_.~**

According to the signs that welcome you to this tiny seaside town, it is known as "Beach City." And Dr. Drakken takes it upon himself to introduce you to the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes that he is also newly discovering.

There is the library. You had such things on Homeworld, but they were all vast and grand, lined with intricate works on Gem history, Gem culture, and Gem battle tactics. This building is square-shaped and slung low to the ground, popping with color and peopled with small spherical chairs that squish into bowl shapes when you sit in them. Drakken refers to them as "beanbag chairs," although you see neither beans nor bags anywhere around them.

Drakken runs into the children's section, where he finds a storybook he remembers from his childhood, which he speaks of as if four decades is such an enormous length of time. It's one of his favorites, he says, a story about a little girl – maybe Steven's age – and a giant red creature humanity bred and tamed from wolves over the last few thousand years. They're called "dogs," and this particular one is named Clifford.

He shows it to you, turning the pages slowly so you can marvel at the illustrations. They're not labeled with arrows delineating the important features of a dog's body. Rather, they seem to have been added simply to enjoy. Always, he breaks into a smile wide enough to light the room when you place your fingers, curious and amazed, to the drawings.

You do not mind either the distance between you or the shortness of that distance.

There's a place that serves pizza, which is apparently tomato sauce smeared on bread, topped by melted cheese. Too greasy for the taste buds you shapeshift onto your tongue.

There's the arcade, a store you never make it into because the strobe lights and the cold, polished floors and the noises of simulated combat are too close to the more unpleasant memories you have of your home. You don't fall into panic this time, but you give your head a firm shake, and Drakken skips off to the next activity.

You spend a great deal of time on the beach, lying in the sand, watching the sky gradually darken and lighten as the Earth's rotation tips Beach City closer to the sun and then drags it away again. Much as you've learned to appreciate the grass, sand will always be your favorite texture.

It means safety is nigh.

That's where you are, on the shore with your toes being sprayed by gusts of foam, the day Dr. Drakken becomes extremely distracted. His focus has always been fleeting, lighting on one subject just long enough for to take joy in it and then stumbling off toward the next. But when he says, "Lapis, there's something I need to tell you," his tone isn't rich with laughter the way it usually is.

Alarmed, you rise up to one knee. "Okay," you say, and you hope your own voice doesn't shake.

Drakken's gaze will only meet yours for an instant. His is turbulent, an ocean under siege by sharp winds. "Something…after you hear it, you might think I'm terrible."

Terrible? You survey the human face you've allowed so near yours. Dr. Drakken is not perfect. He's not a very patient person – you've seen him shift from foot to foot and sigh when his pizza takes five extra minutes to bake – but he has always been terribly patient with you, with the things you are frightened or ignorant of. And although he has a tendency to spray saliva along with his hearty chuckles – and his does not heal as Steven's does – it is nothing your skin can't shake off. What about him could possibly cause you to think poorly of him?

"You're not terrible," you say. It is as automatic a reflex as taking the form your gem suggests, the one best suited to your level of inherent strength. "You're one of the kindest humans I've ever met."

"I didn't use to be." Drakken looks down at his fingers, turning powdery at low tide. "A few years back, I was a…I was a bad guy."

You stare at him, as blank and expressionless as a piece of driftwood.

 _Bad_? The word, the concept, they are an immense breech whose sides you cannot pinpoint. _Bad_. It is something no one wants to descend to, but you are not sure anymore – if, indeed, you ever have been – what takes you to being _bad_. And certainly this man who holds your hand as he walks you gently across the streets where humans drive their newly-invented motorcars, whose face fills with light when he spots a seashell, certainly he is not bad.

"I don't understand," you say.

"A mad scientist! A supervillain! I wanted to take over the world!" Drakken's words thicken until they are as dense as the pizza grease.

As for those words – you still do not understand them. Some of them individually, but you cannot see what they make when fused together. Definitely not anything that would cause your new friend to hang his head as if he were the one to endanger your precious coral.

"The world?" you say. "You mean, Earth?"

"Yes." Drakken rubs up and down his sleeves. "I wanted to overthrow all the world's presidents and prime ministers and dictators and make myself ruler."

You glance around you, at this world ravaged by war and pollution, and you still fail to see the great offense. "I think you'd make a good ruler," you say.

Dr. Drakken's long eyelashes lower until his scar is being brushed. When his eyes open again, they are glassy with the beginnings of tears. "Awww, don't talk like that," he says roughly. "'Cause, you know what? I thought I would, too. I thought I would be a just ruler, and a benevolent one."

"So…why is it a problem?"

"Because power turned me into a whole different person. It made me mean and ruthless, and it wasn't doing wonders for my cardiac health, either." Drakken's smile attempts to be wry. "Besides, my biggest motive was proving myself to these three ex-buddies of mine who'd laughed at one of my first inventions. All I really wanted was to show them not only had I made something of myself – I'd made _every_ thing of myself."

A chill comes over your bare arms. You've never taken revenge on anyone who's wronged you, for fear the consequences would be worse than spending eternity as a reflection; you haven't even ever made a plan to, not seriously. There were times, though, when you entertained the notion. And it felt good.

You must still be looking at him emptily, because Drakken drags in air as though it hurts to breathe it. "That's why I was in prison. Because one of my plans got completely out of hand and a bunch of people got hurt, and I was too power-hungry to even care." His voice cracks. "At the time."

Something suddenly bitter and regretful sets his eyebrow in wrinkles. It is hard to watch, almost as hard as watching a brilliant supernova smolder to its inevitable death.

Whatever it was, it matters powerfully to him now.

"You see, being imprisoned with other people is even worse than being alone." Drakken flusters, his thin hands in constant motion. "Well, maybe not _worse_ – my shrink says I'm not supposed to be comparing my suffering to others' because we all have different stories – things like that –"

 _Shrink_? He says it like it is a workman peddling his trade. Do humans have personnel now who are tasked with changing their size? Does it have anything to do with those glossy-covered magazines you saw in display in the library, boasting of having "THE SECRET TO HUGE WEIGHT LOSS!"? Why would a being want to decrease in mass?

"Anyway, it's a different _kind_ of awful, at least," Drakken continues. "A lot of the guys in there are mean – which is why they're in there in the first place, right? And a lot of them are _huge_. They'll beat you up when the guards aren't looking, you can bet your last nickel on it."

You do not focus on why humans are gambling with nickel. You can vividly picture Dr. Drakken emerging from a rank dungeon, wrists and ankles rubbed raw by manacles, without a Steven in sight.

The brutes are even easier to envision. They encompassed all you knew of humankind before you met Steven.

You nod him on.

"And, as I said, I came out mean. Well, I was mad. Well, I was hurt." Drakken shifts in the sand. "It seemed that the whole world had forgotten about me while I was in there and they all just…moved on without me. I wondered – did I matter so little?"

It is no longer him you are picturing. You see instead, against your will, the bustling memories of a distant planet, no longer your magical home, but a sleek, shiny landscape barren of anything recognizable to you. All the land your feet ever touched long since overturned and packed down and covered.

And before that – angry punches of water. A vehicle hurled in an arc and crumbling on the landing. Heads encased in bubbles. So unlike the dignified manner in which Gems are supposed to conduct themselves on the battlefield.

Is this what it's like to feel sick?

"Keep going," you say.

"I had a friend who I thought would break me out of jail," Drakken says. "And she didn't. So I found a new friend who would. Oh, and this new friend also thought I was some kind of magical prophecy-fulfilling deity or something – which I'm not – I mean, I think I'm pretty great – but then, I'm biased –"

His voice is frantic, searching, scrabbling for ground where you understand. You have witnessed the human condition known as stress, but it's never strung a great weight to your chest before. You nod to him again.

"Anyway, my old friend didn't like the idea of me having another friend, and she came in and attacked my new friend. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, but my new friend fought back – to defend herself, ya know – and she wound up knocking my old friend out because she had a size advantage like you wouldn't believe –" Dr. Drakken speaks as though the words burn in his throat and breaks only long enough to gather more air – "so I wanted to make my old friend stay there and watch while I defeated _our_ longtime arch-nemesis with the help of my _new_ friend!"

When he says "defeated," the semicircles under his eyes stiffen. You do not ask what that defeat looks like.

"I came up with a way to lure my nemesis there," he says. "I used this machine my new friend had brought with her. You turned it on, set the timer, and when time ran out, it sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere!"

You tuck your chin onto your knees. You don't remember all of your Teachings on the atmosphere of this planet, but you know that oxygen is extremely vital for these humans and their frail – lungs; is that what they're called?

"I wasn't planning to actually use it!" Drakken hastens to add. "It was merely a ruse at first, so she'd come to stop me and walk right into my trap. But _then_ my old friend betrayed me and fought FOR our arch-nemesis and I – I decided to let the timer run down, and get rid of my foe _that_ way!"

Tears have escaped from Drakken's eyes and are pooling underneath. The semicircles glisten black like a wet road. "I asked for an oxygen mask for myself. Not for anyone else.

"I don't think I really _wanted_ to kill everyone! I just thought – just thought –"

His vocabulary, always so buoyant and endless, appears to have dried up and left him. You finish for him – "just thought that everyone could go back inside their gems and heal themselves?"

"Something like that. I suppose." Drakken gives you a peculiar look, scrunched at the edges. "I wasn't thinking clearly, at any rate! Not that I can promise I would've done anything differently if I _had_ been thinking clearly…"

In the crevices of your memory, you see Greg the human crawl from his van on all fours, alive but clearly not unhurt. More fragile than you had expected. You recall your triumph, your horror, the pleading at your core for it all to _stop_.

You nod yet again, gaze intent on your ocean.

"Anyway, it doesn't really matter to what extent I realized it," Drakken says. "It doesn't change the fact that I could have destroyed all life on Earth!"

He spirals out that last sentence, as if waiting for you to pronounce his crime unforgiveable. You hurt at the cringe of fear with which he's holding himself.

And all you're doing is looking at him, at this man who has shown such regard for your safety – your contentment, even – and thinking how if your people had gotten their way six thousand years ago, he never would have even been formed at all.

Dr. Drakken has tilted forward now, shielding his face between heaving shoulders. You don't dare to touch them – they seem sharp under the synthetic stuffing in the coat-for-labs. But you inch across his isolated gap and rest your hand next to his. You float it, in a whisper, toward your friend:

"I don't have any room to judge you."

So quiet, little more than a tickle on your lips, and yet you are stunned by the strength and clarity of it.

Drakken makes a noise that attempts to be bitter and rueful only to end in a whimper. "How? I mean, that's really, really sweet of you, thank you, but – how the _heck_ do you not have room to judge me?"

You burrow your palms deep into the sand, down to where the grains are almost chilly. This will be a story you have never told any human. Steven probably already knows, though he has no doubt received a badly twisted version from the Crystal Gems.

But you cannot reply to Dr. Drakken's complete, painful honesty with anything less.

His eyes are earnest as you begin, "Well, you see, my people – when they reproduce –"

To your bewilderment, that is as far as you get before Dr. Drakken is pockmarked with pink globs. He takes his hands away and flattens them against his ears. "La-la-la-la, that's okay, that's enough! I already got that talk, thank you!"

No. This is not a logical reaction. How could he have already heard of the Gems' history when five Earth-days ago, he had no knowledge of what a Gem was?

"What talk?" you say.

Dr. Drakken grows even pinker if possible. You don't think even flimsy humans burn in the sun at such a rapid rate. "You know," he coughs, "the whole 'when-a-mommy-and-a-daddy-love-each-other-very-much' thing."

You have never heard anyone string letters together so quickly. And that's all they are, combinations of letters that wash right out with the tide.

"What are you _talking_ about?" you have to ask.

Drakken blinks at you with eyes that have grown tremendous, and then his blush-blood goes back in and he permits a sheepish grin. "Oh. Never mind. Keep going."

You do as he instructs. "When my people reproduce…we have these machines called Injectors, see? They drill deep, deep down into a planet and carve holes in it, from the lower crust downward."

A pause for the gathering of memories. You were once so sure of their meaning, and now every word feels like steps across moss-covered rocks, common on planets of Class-B importance. You have never explained the Kindergartens to anyone. Strangely, you did not wish to tell Steven. As necessary for the Gems to flourish as they are, the Kindergartens are not the proudest aspect of your culture. You would hate to be the one who traded in Steven's innocence for his knowledge of how things must be.

Dr. Drakken, from what you have just heard, has seen horrific things already. Something in him remarkably resembles innocence, but it is not – it is deeper, stronger. He is no more innocent than you are, and yet there is something – an earnest goodness – that has stayed in his eyes.

No, you do not think him terrible.

Your hands find the cooler sand again. "A new Gem is planted in each of those holes. Inside of them, they grow and develop until they're ready to emerge. And when they do…it wipes out all of the pre-existing life on that planet."

You shut your eyes against the half-formed images of lush valleys, stately trees, and gorgeous rushing oceans. Of unsophisticated species you took such care never to look too closely at, never to have contact with, that needed to be eliminated to make room for a new generation of Gems.

 _As the soil of many solid-based planets must be weeded and tilled to allow for the propagation of crops_ , you believe is how it was worded in your Teaching so long ago.

"They did that for thousands of years." Your voice is now much quieter, so quiet the sea breeze carries it softly to Drakken and then whisks it away. "And I never stopped them."

Someone else did, though.

There is the fusion. Tall. Quiet. Intense. The one you fear most. You can still imagine her hand with the Ruby gem embedded in it, outstretched, preparing to confine you to an inescapable bubble in a boiling-hot room, surrounded by monsters.

The white one, all points and angles except for the oval gem on her pale forehead. She is neat – fastidious. Always, "Sweep the floor! Scrub the sink! Keep everything neat!" To her, you were just one more mess that needed tidying up.

And the third is younger, only a couple thousand years old, still with a hint of Kindergarten-freshness on her purple skin. Still reckless and energetic, the type to distort her face in the mirror while the white one screams in the background, "That is a very _valuable_ artifact only to be used for the _accumulation of knowledge_!"

And there was once a fourth…

You glance back at Dr. Drakken. This is the longest stretch in which you have ever known him to be quiet, and the strain on his throat is so great you can see the bulging, carrying tubes that you remember being called _veins_. He gestures you onward with hand flails, each more impatient than the last.

"One of the planets we tried to convert thousands of years ago was Earth," you say.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Drakken's face processes that, falling into a frown toward his chin, round and oblong like the gem on your back.

"We failed." This is plainly obvious, even to a human, but for some reason you find yourself wanting to state it aloud.

Drakken's frown softens, lips narrowed in thought. "Did you know?" he says. "Did you know people couldn't – what was it you said? – go back inside their gems and…and…"

"Regenerate," you supply.

An upward swing to the bush of hair. "Like a Time Lord?" Drakken says gleefully.

"A what?"

Drakken flushes again, milder this time. "Nothing. My bad."

You do not gather the memories this time. You are too afraid of what you might discover about yourself. "I…I don't know," you finally say. "But you've got to understand; we're brought up to believe that any life form worth keeping around _can_ regenerate."

"Well, that's rather snobbish!" Drakken blurts. Instantly, his fingers are spread over his mouth, plastering tight. "Sorry," he mumbles into them. "I shouldn't talk bad about your people."

"It's –" You hesitate midway through offering him reassurance. Whatever your people have become, you still do not wish to hear them maligned, not by an Earthling.

"I don't understand it all, either," you give him instead.

And then he crouches there. Your friend Dr. Drakken, skin blushing half blue and half pink like an early morning horizon; raised up on one knee and one foot; blurring the line between brute and good person.

If the line can be that perilously thin, what is Homeworld willing to tramp out?

Your bare feet go suddenly cold, and you lift them closer to the dipping sunlight. Sand drizzles between your toes. "What changed for you, Dr. Drakken?" you ask. "How did you stop – stop being bad?"

Relief floods Drakken's face, suspended in his grin as if captured in cupped hands to share with you. "I repelled an alien invasion," he says happily.

"Aliens?" you repeat in horror. You catch your voice going shrill, stretching, almost shattering, as often happens when you are upset. There it is again – that terrible, diminishing word, and you understand why humans resort to using such crude expressions as _the heck_. "What…who?"

"Oh, oh, oh, no!" Drakken appears embarrassed, trying to clean sand out from the uneven fingernails of one hand with those of the other. "Not you guys! Not Gems! They were called _Lorwardians_."

Rows of tiny chills rise to the surface of your skin. Your mirror playbacks display green; heavily muscled; cruel-faced. "Yes. We've never gotten along very well with them," you say. "They're a warrior race, and they're so…wasteful. They conquer planets that they never even plan to use for anything!" You tip your chin, reveling in the pride you can take in what remains of your species' honor.

"Yes, well, right," Drakken says, looking a bit like he's swallowed some of that fine grit sand. "My new friend who broke me out of prison? She was one of them. A Lorwardian, and when she found out I wasn't the magical prophecy-fulfilling alien deity I may possibly have led her to believe I was – but let me add, I had no way of knowing for sure that I COULDN'T have been – anyway, she got mad at me for lying to her, and she got mad at my arch-nemesis for defeating her, so she went back and got her boyfriend and they came back to kidnap us and kill all the rest. Or enslave, maybe. I wasn't really getting a lot of clear answers out of them. But – still! Just because they were mad at two people."

This isn't surprising to you.

"Well, I'd just gotten my plant powers," Drakken continues, "and I didn't quite know how to control them yet. All I'd done so far was sprout flower petals and that wasn't much help aboard a spacecraft mined with laser traps! Then I was mouthing off and thought I accidentally blew up my arch-nemesis, and I always….I always thought that would make me so happy. But I wasn't. Not at all."

It pulses in the space between you, the half-madness of guilt – his healing yet still raw; yours cracked and seeping for the first time.

Harsh sounds emanate from Dr. Drakken's throat. You are afraid he is about to either choke or cry, and you have never been Taught how to treat either of those. "So I made a vow," he says. "Right then and there, I decided to spend the rest of my life trying to make things right. And when my arch-nemesis turned out to have survived after all, we teamed up and I went off to save the world."

You turn your focus slightly toward the ocean, imagine its cleansing waves breaking over you. "How?"

"I went back to my lair and grabbed my Hydro-Pollinator – the device that generated the plants I could control." His buoy-words are cresting on confidence. "There was a giant extraterrestrial machine trying to stomp me flat into the ground the whole time, and I didn't even _notice_ until I'd recovered my precious machine!

"I sprayed the battle machines with Hydro-Pollinator fluid and when the flowers grew, I commanded them to smash the entire fleet and restrain the Lorwardians! It took me a little while to admit I made a much better hero than villain, because this guy I hated was saying the same thing, and I absolutely could not stand the thought of him being right…"

Drakken continues, but only the optimistic rhythm of his voice registers. You are staring at your toes again, coloring in the details of Dr. Drakken, brandishing a Hydro-Pollinator – whatever it is – smiling, sweating, triumphant. Defending his people even though they have caused him such pain.

That is what the best of Gems once stood for.

"You were brave," you whisper.

Drakken's chest expands and then contracts again with a narrow "Huh." "I suppose I was. Rather ironic, considering just about everyone considered me a coward – and I guess I kind of am."

"No." You shake your head emphatically. "No. If you're brave even once, you're not a coward."

The bump in Dr. Drakken's throat crawls up and down.

And then you look down at yourself, at your feet that have never done anything with conflict but run from it. Your hands that shook too hard to hold a weapon. "I hope I can be brave," you murmur. "Someday. When it really matters."

He rolls onto his belly in the dip his seat has made in the sand and lets his legs drape backward over themselves. "I bet you will be."

And there is none of the politeness that other humans occasionally spread over their faces as if assuming an unsustainable form. He speaks genuinely; his smile broad, white, and real; he scuttles forward on his elbows with eagerness.

"You really think so?" you ask him. No longer shrill, you hear yourself: tentative and longing.

Drakken bobs his head of soft black quills. "Really. I swear."

"Oh. Okay." You frown. "I guess you can talk however you want, but it doesn't seem very polite."

Drakken's eyes flicker befuddlement for a blink's span and then crinkle – in delight now. "No, I don't mean I swear like I go around saying. . . well, I'm not going to demonstrate in front of a lady." His flush returns. "'I swear' is just something people – humans – say when they mean they really, really, _really_ mean something one-hundred-percent, and that's the highest percent there is. Except in photo resolution."

The tide takes that last wonderful bit of nonsense away. You rest your arms among the sand and the shells and let the sun beat down on your bare shoulders.

He believes in you.

"It's hard, though, coming out of the whole villainy thing," Drakken states. "Sometimes, when somebody is really rude to me, I still get the urge to take out a freeze ray and frost their hiney! When I laugh, it still sounds a little…kind of maniacal, I guess? And sometimes I still wake up in the night and think I'm in prison. Sometimes it's hard to believe I'm safe."

He quails into a smaller knot, legs tucked up so you notice anew how short they are. The fear is being controlled by quick, careful breaths, and yet it is starkly recognizable.

You wish to take it from him.

For several moments, you watch your hands dive through the flaxen grains. At last you say, "You know you're safe here with me, right?"

That is all you can think to say. That is all – in some marvelous, unknowable way, you have come to value this temporary human.

Dr. Drakken's smile widens even further, until his eyes are tearing from the weight of it. "Yes. I do know that. You're a very nice girl."

Then he reaches over and moves his hand a tiny distance to cover yours. He delicately braids the fingers together until the prints fuse.

Even hours later, after he has gotten up and left, you are still sitting before your ocean in wonder.

 **~So. Some true confessions, understanding and misunderstanding, and a little bit of foreshadowing for _Jailbreak_. Hope you enjoyed.**

 **And - yeah- Lapis says "I swear" on _The Message_ , and it struck me as a strangely modern phrase for her to know, so I had her pick it up from Drakken. :)~**


	5. Dodo Bird

**~At loooooooooongggggg last, enjoy!**

 **Huge, huge, huge thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing! I can't believe this thing is getting the attention it is. Ya'all are the best.**

 **And in case I don't update between now and then, have a very merry Christmas and a happy holiday season!~**

It is a strange thing, guilt.

It does not simmer slowly to a boil, the way a Gem gradually matures deep in a planet's mantle. It washes over you in a great and terrible rush, much as horror overcame your relief once you were released from the mirror's confines.

You could feel the grit of sand – your favorite texture – between your fingers once more, but the Earth was a twisted facsimile of your memories. A haze of silver hung over everything; the ground warped beneath feet that wouldn't quite hold steady. And no matter how hard you strained, you could not summon your wings, only a clogged windup that never found fruition.

The realization shook you: _I'm cracked._

Steven healed you then. And yet something in you now feels irreparably damaged as you wander down the streets and docks of Beach City with Dr. Drakken, more closely examining the parade of humans passing by, going about their ordinary lives.

There are children, like Steven, running barefoot across your meadow, trailing behind them long strings. At the end of those are multicolored diamonds that gust and dip with the wind currents, fluttering as they rise to meet the clouds. The shape makes you shudder. The children's gleeful giggles make you hurt.

There are pairs of young men and women who must be mates, strolling along with their fingers intertwined as though they are two parts of the same being. Whole units formed of men, women, and children of both the large and small varieties. Some of the children must be recently emerged, and they dart across the sand, headed straight for the ocean – who could blame them? – while their female caretakers yell because they haven't yet had the chance to coat them with sunscreen, a type of cream humans have developed that protects their skin cells from the sun's harsh rays.

Every picture you store up of them is tainted – black ballpoint scribbling out a form of consent – by a strangled refrain of, _My people didn't think you deserved to exist._

One day, Dr. Drakken shows you to a building with a pole strapped to the front entrance, spinning red and white like some archaic welcome. He refers to the place as a "barbershop," a place where humans have their hair attended to.

Apparently, they cannot stabilize their hair at a certain length and fashion as Gems can. Instead, theirs actually _grows_ – at an exceedingly slow rate, albeit one that occasionally requires trimming. Some wear theirs long, other shorter, and there are even some males with no hair at all. This happens sometimes when humans reach the midpoint of their lifespan, Dr. Drakken tells you, though some go "bald," as he calls it, earlier.

You understand now the shiny, pink dome crowning Greg's hair.

Their limitations are intriguing. There is so much they cannot do and even more which they are just beginning to limp their way through. You feel a sudden sweep of caring, a desire to keep watch over them, the way you would over young Gems poking out of their Kindergarten holes for the first time. As if the humans have committed no crimes more grievous than being new and unknowing.

You know this is not true. The huge block letters screaming out from human journals stored in front of the barbershop prove otherwise. And yet, from your observation, when the humans pass by and see the destruction other members of their species have wrought, they sigh and shake their heads in dismay.

Other details catch your attention. Every human who uses the barbershop exits with smoother, shinier, silkier hair than when they entered.

You put self-conscious hands to the sides of your raggedy – "bob" is a term one of the barbershop magazines used – which you have never given a second thought to. Dr. Drakken swats them away and says, in his surprising softness, "Nuh-uh."

But the moment which sears and stays is when a young woman carries in the tiniest human being you have ever seen to have his hair – a cumulus cloud of dark curls like Steven's – cut. His eyes are barely open.

And you know – if Homeworld had crushed the rebellion, there would never have been a Steven to free you, to reach out to you and heal you even after you stole his ocean and frightened him and hurt someone who means as much to him as Greg obviously does. You haven't had more than a passing acquaintance with any of its current citizens, but you certainly cannot see any of them troubling to rescue a Gem who was probably long past her prime anyway.

You grab for the wall behind you. Your legs are limp again.

It makes you want to withdraw, possibly all the way back into your gem, even though you have sustained no physical damage. The cold that once slunk across your back when you heard the Order being given over and over – _Colonize this planet_ – is now burning you with shame.

A great gulf opens up inside you, like the one you can split the ocean into with a simple wave of your wrist. You hug your knees. And you turn to the one human who can understand, whose own shame hangs over him in distinct but translucent layers.

"Dr. Drakken?" you begin.

Drakken looks up quickly from licking at the sugared knob on a stick – known as a "lollipop," he's informed you – that he talked the desk woman at the barbershop into giving him. You haven't unwrapped yours yet. "Hmm?"

In spite of it all, his appearance – eyebrow snarled, eyes roaming, sticky patches of sucking-juice hardening at the sides of his mouth – lets you giggle. It is somehow as freeing as a good soar up into the atmosphere, far beyond the noisy aircraft that have also developed in your absence.

You pick your way around the words carefully. "I'm confused."

His face alights, as it always does whenever he is invited to further educate you. "Oh!" He leans over and tears the thin covering off your lollipop. "See, you have to take the plastic off first, remember? Then you stick it in your mouth and suck on it some to get it soft. Don't try to bite it – not right away. Otherwise, you could chip a tooth – which, I mean, I guess _you_ could just grow a new one, but it would still hurt, right?"

For all his fumbling, he is the best Teacher you have ever had.

But that was not the question you need answered. "I mean – I'm confused about Gems," you say.

Dr. Drakken's eyebrow lifts, rumpling into a frown. "Oh," he repeats. "Well, you know more about them than I do."

"I thought I did," you say. "Now…I'm not so sure. I always thought my people were good. But we could've destroyed your planet and your kind just so there would be more of _us_ around."

You shake your head. "It was one thing a long, long time ago, but there are plenty of us by now. And we don't age and die the way other species do, so it's not like we need to be constantly making replacements.

"Dr. Drakken, the Homeworld Gems – are we –" You grasp for the term you heard him say earlier, reflecting it back across your memory. "Are we villains?"

Drakken's breath retracts sharply, dragging the entire stick in with it. He quickly reaches in and fishes it out before you can seize the opportunity to save him. "Whoa," he says. "That's heavy."

You put your hand up to feel the air. It does seem heavier somehow, as if it is being weighted down with – what is it called? – rain. Since the clouds are white, puffier and less intense than the view from Homeworld, and the pressure rests solely on your shoulders, though, it can't be. Perhaps it is what the shoulders themselves are – an illusion, with mass.

There is a thick silence, one you are afraid to speak into. Drakken drums his fingertips together and makes a processing noise.

"Ooh! I know!" he cries at last, bracing his knees on the cement as he lifts himself to a stand again. "Come on, Lapis. I have something to show you."

You follow the blue-clad back as it weaves, off-kilter, through the milling crowds. His movements are quick and eager now.

He leads you down the walk-of-boards; across an Earth street whose sign flashes a green outline of a human that indicates it is safe to walk among the fussy, zigzagging cars; to the same windowed building – _library_ – welcoming you with its lack of urgency. Through the doors, where he playfully pushes a button so that they swing wide for him as if he is a Commander.

The bookcases are every bit as tall and wide-set as you are accustomed to, yet they don't glower down at you in the same manner as the glimmering ones that hold the few paper records Homeworld continues to use. _Pompous_ is the term that comes to you.

In spite of the sunlight washing in through smeared windows, you shiver.

It is not the bright, cheerful children's section that Dr. Drakken heads for this time, however. He situates himself on a cozy strip of carpet, wedged narrowly between two differently sized bookcases, and you sit with him, doing your best to duplicate his cross-legged pose. It is surprisingly comfortable.

Drakken scans the finger humans most often use across a shelf of books, muttering and murmuring and grunting until it lands on one in particular: a volume flat on almost all edges, squared off in importance. With the same haphazard gentleness with which he always treats you, he nudges a corner toward your lap and allows your hands to explore its glossy surface with its tiny rivets.

Only when you nod him on does he open the book, flip through the pages, and nod with satisfaction over one spread in particular. This _does_ appear to be like the books on Homeworld, with captions beneath every grayscale picture and charts filling the white spaces.

What Drakken points to is a picture of a – a – _creature_. It has wings, like you, but that is where all similarities end. It is stocky, with a hooked nose (no – _beak_ comes to you) that curves back around on itself like a twisted paddle.

"This is the dodo bird," Dr. Drakken declares.

You giggle again. The name somehow perfectly suits the silly-looking creature staring blankly at you from its position on the page.

Drakken's face, however, remains sober. "It's extinct."

"I'm sorry," you say automatically. Extinction is never a happy event, but it can happen so easily. One quick strike from a meteor, and some poor race is cracked beyond repair.

Drakken shakes his head – slowly, as though the weight is strapped to him, as well. "Only a few hundred years ago, too. And not from natural causes. That's not what killed it."

Your eyes narrow. "What _did_ kill it?"

"Humans." The curl to Drakken's lip is so familiar it takes you a moment to recall he is one of them, he is not a Gem.

"How…why?" You survey the "bird" again. Its wings are too stubby to enable flight; it appears harmless. "Was it a threat?"

Drakken snorts. "Hardly. It only ever lived on one island, which was…recently" (you can tell it is hard for him to refer to centuries ago as "recently") "colonized by humans. The dodos had never seen humans before, and they were big and dumb and just followed humans around like puppies…I mean, you know, loyally. And the humans thought they were a big pain in the neck, so they started killing them off and didn't realize they were wiping them out until the last one was gone." His eyes, deep and lustrous as wells of oil, find yours. "Just because they _annoyed_ us."

His voice is rigid but it splinters, like the wood Homeworld does not use in construction anymore. You are unable to speak at all, and you blink at him.

"See, we're not the scum-sucking bottom dwellers you guys… _some_ of you guys think we are," Drakken says. "But we're not a billion times better, either. All of us that are advanced enough to be selfish tend to be."

He tilts his head to one side. With faintly illuminated squares from the window speckled across his soft blue skin and his mouth resolute between the sticky patches, he does appear strangely wise. He is the Guide, well-versed in the geography of an alien planet, ensuring the rest of you do not get lost in some wild jungle or swallowed by hungry quicksand.

And you never stray far from a Guide.

"But – there are good humans," you say. It's the first time you've admitted such a thing aloud.

The room shimmers with Drakken's grin, which never stays away for long. "And there are good Gems, too." He shrugs, suddenly near shy. "Such as yourself, Lapis."

A smile lifts your cheeks as naturally as your wings will skim a gust of wind.

"Oh!" Dr. Drakken taps on the front of the book, and you refrain from startling just in time. "Funny story about dodo birds!"

You glance at the date marked as the dodo's extinction and at this man whom you know to be forty-two years old. You frown. "How do you have a story about dodo birds?" you say.

"Ah, I'll get to that. You see, back when I was a supervillain, my best friend Shego was my sidekick. That's like a subordinate who's also your friend," he clarifies. His gaze lands somewhere above and far beyond you, as if he, too, is viewing a reflection of the past. "But, oh my goodness, did that girl have a _mouth_ on her! Finally one day I mind-controlled her, just to get her to stop mocking me."

You nod him on.

"And I made her bring me milk and cookies and listen –"

Although you hate to interrupt – "what are cookies?" you ask. Drakken's voice is grim, like he is confessing to an unimaginable crime. And since you see nothing sinister about milk – it is a liquid produced by mammals, if you remember correctly – there must be something to "cookies."

"Food. Treats. Dessert for when you're done with the rest of your food."

"Oh." This doesn't answer your question, but you let him continue.

"And I was telling her all my childhood stories, about how I invented this ray to survive dodgeball. That's a game they make you play at school, and it involves – well – dodging a ball, of course."

 _Game_? _School_?

 _Ball_. You receive the word, connect it with the recreational spheres you have watched children bounce down the walk-of-boards. You do not understand what about it is bringing that faraway pain to Drakken's eyes.

"Then, while I was working on my latest evil plan – which…let's see…what was that?" Drakken strums his lower lip as though playing an instrument whose name you cannot recall. "Oh, yes, of course! More mind control chips!

"Anyway, I was asking her to fetch all my tools and she was obeying, which was just a really nice change for me. And then I started thinking I was 'all that'" – the ridiculous way in which he exaggerates the words, pinching at the invisible mass of gases that he needs to breathe, sets you giggling again – "and I told her to get me a fork."

Your face must be giving off puzzlement, because Drakken explains, "A fork is something, a utensil, that you use to get food to your mouth when it would be rude to just pick it up."

You look down at your lollipop, lying still in your lap. The existence of rules which you have not learned twitches uneasily inside you.

Dr. Drakken's laughter seems to rumble from his shoulders, though of course you know it is coming from his mouth. "And then – I told her to get me a dodo bird, just to see how she would respond. Eventually, I told her, 'Psyche! Dodo birds are extinct!' But I guess she didn't hear me.

"Because when I turned around and happened to glimpse our security camera, there was our arch-nemesis climbing up to get us! She was _thiiiiiiiiis_ close to the lair." Drakken holds his pointing finger an unbelievably small measure away from his thumb. "And I – and I asked why Shego hadn't told me she was coming, and you know what she says?"

You shake your head no. How could you know?

"She says – she says – she says, 'I was looking for a dodo bird.'" Drakken slaps his hand against his knee several times and laughs so hard it requires him to lie down, head reclined against a bare base shelf behind him.

This must be Earth humor, because you don't get it.

"Then – well, to make a long story very, very short, my mind control chip was dismantled and Shego came out of it. And she was _ticked_ ," Drakken says.

"She had _ticks_?" you ask disgustedly.

"No!" Drakken chuckles even harder. "She was really, really mad. She said, 'Do you have any idea what listening to you is like? IT IS SO BORING!'"

You cast a second look at this man – quivering with energy; perched on his knees; leaning as always slightly forward, as if eager to welcome whatever his planet conjures up next. Who could possibly label him boring?

"She gave me a black eye," Drakken says.

"Your eyes are already black," you say. Gem eyes tend to be light-colored to complement flesh and hair, and his are striking in their contrast. And while Earth customs may be different, Gems do not typically give gifts when they are angry with someone. You feel slithers of anxiety.

"Oh, no, no! It's more like – here." Drakken taps the area between his lower eyelid and his cheekbone. "It's when you get punched in the eye so hard, all the skin swells up and turns dark."

The slithers morph into sympathy. You've been briefly pained by bruises, but it doesn't take a Gem long to shapeshift their blood vessels back together. How long does a mere human have to suffer the throb under their skin?

And then the truth of what he's saying immobilizes you. Only your lips part enough to say, "She punched you?"

"Er, yes." Drakken grimaces as he rubs the bridge of his nose. "She beat me up pretty good."

His face is so open and unguarded, not even shielded by the visors all Homeworld Gems began wearing in your absence. And you know by sight, with the same intuition with which you can judge the sea's currents, that it will not stand up to angry fists, even the smallest of them. "She beat you up?" you repeat. "Why?"

Drakken gazes at you as if you have said something nonsensical. "Um, because I mind-controlled her."

You give your head a couple of frenzied shakes. "And made her bring you treats and look around for extinct birds? That's _nothing_. Do you know what Yellow Diamond and her armies would do if they had the power of mind control?"

It's the type of question you do not expect an answer to; the type which, you recall uncomfortably, a Gem is only permitted to ask of her inferiors.

Dr. Drakken does answer, to your relief, because you can't bear to consider him your inferior any longer. "No. I don't even know anyone named Yellow Diamond."

"That's a good thing." You lean away from the cold metal of the shelf, which is suddenly too close to the bleak shining hub that used to be home. "Your friend _hurt_ you?"

"Oh. Lapis. Look," Drakken says. He gratingly scoots his seat across the carpet toward you, and you surprise yourself by not leaning away from _him_. "Shego and I worked it out. It's over. Water under the bridge."

Familiar with the behavior of water, you nod.

And yet you must ask – "So, things are different? You're safe with her now?"

"Yup!" Drakken shoots you the grin again, wide open until you can see all the ridges of his throat. "I don't mind control her anymore, and she doesn't beat me up anymore. I'm safe with her – and she's safe with me."

Releasing a breath, you let the book slap shut and return it to the shelf. You admittedly have no idea what your course of action would've been, if any, had he said no. You have never fought for anything in your life and you are unsure whether you could bring yourself to stand with the humans should the war begin anew.

But you cannot endanger _this_ human.

Drakken's forehead has furrowed into fine rows; his hands loop and tumble in his lap, attention still at that burrowing level where he might not even be seeing them. He appears so knowledgeable at this point that you find yourself searching for other questions to pose.

"What other species have gone extinct on Earth?" you ask.

"Oh, all kinds!" Drakken's expressive fingers warm to the topic. "Dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, passenger pigeons" – he shakes his head – "not really sure what happened there. Saber-toothed tigers."

Energy quivers across your back as you envision large, powerful creatures – _felines_ , if you remember correctly – with teeth like Gem weapons. You do not think you regret the lost opportunity to encounter those beasts.

But another reflection from the past streams across your mind. A solid, towering, majestic creature with movingly wise, compassionate eyes. They, far more than the humans you encountered so many centuries ago, took care of their own kind. You hated to see such a species wiped out.

"Do you still have –" you scan every one of your manifested senses for the word to match the picture – "elephants?"

Drakken nods with more ceremony than you ever thought a simple human could give such a simple act. "Yes! They're endangered, but-but-but, people are working to save them!" The nodding head ducks and tilts to meet your face. "Because we can do that, too."

They can?

When you shut your eyes, old memories are punctured by the new ones, collapsing from the inside. The brutes who chased each other with crude wooden tools dissolve, sandy bit by sandy bit, into the image of human beings _trying_. Rising to walk, halting and stumbling much as you did when you emerged from the mirror and took your first steps in thousands of years; failing more often than not yet still rooted in firm determination that pushes them to their feet again.

You could not abandon your home, your life, your community for them as the Crystal Gems did, but you can see how they produced Dr. Drakken. And Steven, your Steven, whose goodness perhaps did not stem in its entirety from his Gem heritage.

Your eyes open again to discover Dr. Drakken's legs stretched in full across the aisle, his toes spread inside his sandals toward the sunlight. The playfulness of it echoes in your memory, conjuring up pictures of other creatures, comma-shaped ones with smooth gray skin and laughing voices. You remember being greeted by them last time, when you first plunged into the ocean and led it away with you, how relieved and comforted you were by the sight of their spiky, grinning teeth.

"I know you still have dolphins," you say. "And lions. Steven has a pet lion. It's pink."

"A pink lion?" Drakken's eyebrow slides upward, one bristly side higher than the other. "How delightful! I have a pink poodle."

"What's a poodle?" you ask.

"It's a dog."

You recall the book illustrated in warm, rich-toned reds that welcomed your touch. "Like Clifford?"

"Yes!" Drakken points at you as though you have set Gem culture forward a thousand years. "Only much, much smaller, and their fur's curly."

"Oh." You adjust the picture to one of a miniature animal with fur the lion's color and Steven's texture. This and the happy sounds chirping from Drakken's mouth relax your grip enough to slide your hands down to your own lap and slowly retrieve your lollipop. You examine the sphere for a minute that seems longer than normal, then place it carefully between your lips, following Dr. Drakken's instructions not to bite down right away.

It is sweet. Almost _too_ sweet, with a taste that matches the smell of overripe berries that once overran Kindergarten Base 12. The air was always pungent, sticky with that odor when the planet's orbit passed nearest the sun. And yet when you take a tiny, cautious lick, something more solid lies underneath, something that anchors the flavor and holds it in the pleasant.

Dr. Drakken stands now, reaches a palm down to help you up even though you don't require assistance, and knocks his own hip into a bookshelf as he swivels. The stick shifts to the other corner of his mouth and wiggles unhappily as he rubs the knot that must hurt, fragile as his kind is. "I have so much to show you here!" he cries.

And he is so hopeful that it does not even occur to you not to follow when he turns and twirls up to the front aisle of shelves.

He removes a small, flat square box and hands it to you. It appears solid, but when you touch it, it squishes slightly under your fingertips. Although you've never broken anything before without the aid of the ocean, you drop your hands anyway. You cannot cause damage, cannot be charged Earth currency when you have none to pay.

Drakken pops open two snaps on the case and opens it. A familiar pristine ring, silvered save for the band of rainbow in the center, lies inside.

"It's an instructional disk," you say, blinking at it.

"We call it a DVD," Drakken informs you. "A Digital Video Disk."

You nod to let him know this makes sense.

"And they're not all instructional down here. Which – a lot of them still are – and those are really neat – but they can also be used just to tell stories," he says.

"Like the books?" you say.

"Exactly! They can make you laugh or cry or get scared." Drakken crosses his arms to touch opposite shoulders, as if giving himself a hug. "But the _best_ movies do _all_ of that – and more!

"Behoooolllllllllld!" he bellows, the noise echoing in the strangely silent building, as he gestures grandly to his chosen shelf and begins rifling through the square cases. "Let's see, we have _The Lion King_ , _Anastasia_ , _Toy Story_ , _Beauty and the Beast_." He interrupts himself with a wince. "Well, maybe not that one…it's got a mirror in it…."

Though you do not see how a mirror could fit into a square that small, you pace a short stretch backward anyway.

"And there's more!" Drakken flits around behind you and spreads his fingers into starbursts that frame your cheeks from a respectful distance. "There are so many real-life stories behind our holidays. Everything from Columbus Day to Thanksgiving! And Christmas – oooh, Christmas is my favorite!"

The words are more buoy-like than ever, bobbing on waves of excitement that capture you in their cap. Whatever he is speaking of, you want some of it for yourself.

"What's Christmas?" you ask.

Drakken's chin jerks sharply to the right. "Whaaaaaa – ohhhhhh – wait, when did you say you were last here? Before the mirror thing?"

"Five thousand years ago." Or was it six? Much of that still exists in a walled-off blur in your head.

The fascinating black eyes stretch as wide as his starry fingers. "So…before…"

"Before what?" you say.

Drakken turns to look you full in the face. His smile shimmers, so joyous. "Oh," he says happily. "This is one of my _favorite_ stories."


	6. Family

**~Whooo. . . I'm back! Still floating on Cloud 9 from. . . *cough* a certain Cartoon Network promo leak. That's all I'm gonna say for those of you who don't want spoilers. :D**

 **At the time I wrote this, the most recent episode was _Too Far_ (although I've edited a few details that were clarified in Stevenbomb 4).~**

In the days that follow, you feel lighter, as if you have been transformed from a dull, heavy dodo into one of the sleeker birds that dive for fish in your ocean, though you haven't shapeshifted for millennia. You find your walk becoming quicker and airier to keep up with Dr. Drakken's energetic strides on his short legs.

With the plethora of what he has already shown you, you are amazed that he continues to discover new excursions. Today's was to a clothing store – another novelty for you, since your simple top and skirt have served you well for over seven thousand years. Apparently, human clothing is a tangible, physical construct: it can dirty; it can discolor; it can come unraveled or be eaten by insects, if a human is unlucky enough. Therefore, more than one outfit is usually necessary.

The clothes on display match the ones you have spotted the residents of Beach City wearing – pressed blue slacks called "jeans," open-toed sandals, garishly printed shirts. What freezes you in your tracks, despite the warm weather, are the startling half-human creatures modeling them. Scrawny and pure white, they pose with their bony hips jutted forward and their white, unpainted eyes as dead as Gem shards. They remind you of Pearls that have not yet been activated.

You did not panic. You simply stopped and stared and pointed a finger that was only trembling slightly. "Dr. Drakken?" you asked, and your pitch became shrill again in that way you hate. "What are those things? Why do some of them not have heads?"

Dr. Drakken plants the palm of his hand directly in the center of his forehead with an audible clap. "Oh, bother!" he says. "Yes, those can give you the willies, can't they?"

It sounds like a question-without-answer, which you are gathering is not a sign of pulling rank among the human hierarchy. You nod anyway.

"They're mannequins," Drakken explains. "Plastic. Not real people. I don't know why they don't bother making heads for some of them or coloring their eyes in or anything – a nice brown would do nicely; that's the predominant eye color in humans – anything so as not to tap into our pathological fear of…"

His words swirl and some are lost when abrupt new music begins tapping out of the speakers above your heads. Nevertheless, listening to them bobbing on their currents, you are once again safe.

"See?" Drakken goes up to one of the "mannequins" and pokes their long, plaster-colored arm. "They're not really people. They don't even feel this."

Yes, well, that is what you were told about Pearls, too, and then one of them stored you inside her head…

Dr. Drakken must sense you are still ill at ease, though, and he redirects the course so that the two of you travel down to the beach, the closest place to a sanctuary you have on this planet. A boat, one throwing out much louder noises than you remember boats making, slices by, splitting the water on either side into two perfect, clean halves. The feel of the water lapping between your bare toes has the same press, the same soothe, as Steven's healing poultice against your back.

When you glance up at Dr. Drakken to include him in a calmed sigh, you see he is thumbing at a small, vaguely black contraption that is shaped like a rectangle with rounded-off edges. The device is low-tech enough to inspire curiosity rather than wariness.

"What are you doing?" you ask.

"Huh?" Drakken looks up, pupils centering on his tiny nose. "Oh! I was just texting Shego."

"Text…ing?" _Text_ is a word you understand, but you have never heard it function as a verb before.

"Yup," Drakken says. "It's like giving someone a phone call, only instead of saying things out loud, you type them with a keyboard, and then they get it on their phone."

"Oh. I see." Your chin hovers just above his elbow as you examine the screen of what is apparently now a human phone. "Gems can communicate like that, but we don't call it texting." You shrug. "It's a different term now than it used to be…"

Nostalgia sweeps over you.

"Hey, hey." Dr. Drakken flails his small hands, nearing helplessness. "Don't be sad, Lapis. Please? I have a friend – well, an old-enemy friend, but we're definitely a lot closer than I am with the rocket scientist guy! He's a child genius and is almost as smart as I am and better with electronics, and I bet he could find a way to amp up my cell phone so you can call home if you want to."

The kindness of it washes you like the waves, but you shake your head anyway. "No. I – I appreciate it?" Is that what you're supposed to say? "But there's no one for me to call anymore."

You vividly recall, hard as you are trying not to, the jostles you received from hundreds of Gems following a path that wasn't there last time, faces sequestered behind informational screens – also new; the muttered insults of those few who spared the time to note your presence. Saved from being trampled only by taking to the sky.

"Oh, come on." Drakken folds his "phone" and places it in one deep pocket. "Surely someone must miss you back on Homeland."

You bristle, as if a sharp feather has been trailed between your shoulder blades. "Home _world_ ," you correct him.

"Yes, of course. Sorry." His apology is immediate and offhand, as if he doesn't comprehend the gravity of his error. "Seriously, though – didn't you have, say, a family at some point?"

 _Family_. The word is hollowly familiar, but you cannot make out the muted images your mental reflections produce. All you know is it leaves a strange ache somewhere in the spot where humans have a stomach.

"What's a family?" you ask.

Drakken's hand goes to his mouth. "Do you have _parents_?"

You are confused – he has answered a question with another question, and you have no choice but to respond in kind. "What are parents?"

Drakken's face crumbles like fine, dry soil. "You don't have a _mother_?" he croaks. "That's the saddest thing I ever heard!"

He sounds so stricken with sorrow that for an instant you feel sadness for yourself, too.

"What's a mother?" Whatever it is clearly has great value to him.

It takes several moments for Dr. Drakken to collect himself from the edge of tears and fall back into his Teaching role. "A mother…is like the planet that you grow inside of. Only she's a person."

You ponder that for several more moments. "So – a person grows inside of another person?"

"Yes! And when you're ready to emerge, your mother does something called 'giving birth,' which…" Drakken's cheeks pop with pink spots again. "…if you ever need more information on that, you can ask _my_ mother, and she'll tell you more than you'd ever want to know. Eh-heh."

You trust his word on this. "And she's special because she gave you life," you conclude.

"Oh, that and so much more," Drakken says, eyes gleaming again. "You see, humans are born really weak and vulnerable and won't survive if someone doesn't take care of them."

Of course. That is why the Crystal Gems have taken in Steven. In some backdoor corner of your mind, you are grateful to them for the first time ever.

"And usually – not always – that's what a mother does best," Drakken continues. "She feeds you and then teaches you how to feed yourself. She carries you around until you learn how to walk. She cleans up your – uh – your disposals when you're too young to control them." The pink begins to leach across his nose to meet itself.

You try to envision it – being a creature just emerged, with no strength or skills, a creature who does not even know intuitively where they can go to find the nearest Teacher. In need of help with functions you have not yet mastered. Not knowing, even, how to walk. How do they learn?

"That – that sounds like a very important job," you say.

Drakken nods, the bramble-hair tied at his nape bobbing along. "Very, _very_ important. Once you grow up – which is about eighteen, twenty, twenty-one, generally – you move out and take care of yourself, but your mother never, never stops taking care of you. Never. No matter how much you tell her you're a grown man and you don't need her babying you…"

He is no longer speaking about you. You will never be "a grown man."

"What does she do?" you ask. There is no shrillness this time. You are almost whispering.

"She'll come over when you're sick. She'll tuck you in bed. She'll wipe your eyes when you cry – and brush your hair out of your face – and say she still loves you, even if you _did_ try to take over the world…"

Here Drakken's voice becomes unsteady. You feel your legs wobble slightly, too, when you imagine – just for a second – tender hands brushing your hair back from your face.

A touch you have never had.

Drakken's hand reaches into his coat-of-lab's storage space and returns holding a dilapidated blue square that unfolds into what he refers to as his _wallet_. It opens now, displaying the small photographed portrait of a woman. "This is my mother," he says with more than a touch of pride.

You gaze long and hard at the woman, struck by her voluminous hair. It's a gentle, muted red, pink almost, nearly the hue of Drakken's embarrassment. Her features are hung with the care and tenderness Drakken has ascribed to her.

And with familiarity.

"She looks like you!" you cry, dimly aware that you are smiling more widely than you have in days. "The – chin. Yours is just like hers."

You touch the slight point of your own chin, so different from the robust roundness of Drakken's.

Drakken grins in return, bordering on bashful. "Yes. That's because she gave me some of her DNA," he says, and then his head tilts to the left. "Do you know what that is?"

You nod. You remember it being Taught to you as an example of how backward humans are – that they rely on such a crude genetics system, where even the slightest of fractures in the helix results in a human who will constantly struggle to function. Somehow, you never applied it to a mother passing on a charming chin to her – to her –

"What are you to her?" you ask.

"I'm her son," Drakken says. You scarcely catch the words before they clog together. "A girl is – _you_ would be – a _daughter_."

Sudden warmth suffuses your gem. It is the same momentary awakening before your wings unfold, only this lingers.

Dr. Drakken flops onto the sand beside you. It's rare to see such awkwardness and such ease coexist in one creature. "Do you have a father?" he asks.

Brows knit at him, you shake your head.

Drakken winces, the semicircles beneath his eyes making a pained, knowing crawl. "Me neither. I used to have one, but…he left," he says, his voice breaking like waves meeting a rocky coastline.

You stare at him, uncomprehending. "But I thought humans mated for life," you say.

Drakken emits a harsh, bitter noise, sharp as the snapping of a twig someone accidentally tread on. Perhaps it is a form of laughter, yet you strongly prefer his hearty chuckle. "Yes. Me too."

The anguish now is layers deeper than any he has shown you before, farther down than the Homeworld Gems were able to reach into the Earth before the Crystal Gems rebelled.

You feel powerless. You could call in the ocean, douse Drakken with it at your command, but it would be no help at all. What would Steven do, if he were here, to comfort him?

In tiny increments, you close the gap between you and lay a tentative hand on Drakken's shoulder.

It wobbles under your palm. "I guess he must have been nice at some point," Drakken says, "or my mother never would've married him" –

 _Married_. You add that to your Earth-related vocabulary.

" – but then, he had this _job_ ," Drakken continues, his nose wrinkling as if it has encountered the smell of decaying seaweed.

"I understand," you cut in, daring to interrupt in order to not prolong the shared pain. How well you understand. How many perfectly nice Gems you have watched become cold and snappish within mere months of their Assignments.

The smile that appears on Drakken's face is fragile, but it is genuine, and he found it for you. "Not all fathers are like that, though. I have a friend who's a really, really good father. Well, he actually used to spoil his son a lot – which means he would give the kid everything he ever wanted and never say no to him, not that he would leave him to rot – but that was because the kid's mother was dead and my friend was really lonely –"

Drakken takes a large, desperately-needed breath. "Anyway, but now he's teaching the kid how to do things, but he'll still do anything he can to protect him. That's what good fathers are like. That's what they do. And he spends tons of time with him and talks to him about wise things… and his voice is like the sound of rustling leaves, to wax poetic..."

You try to recall that sound, but. . . it's been so long.

The soothing rhythm of his words persists, but your mind veers elsewhere. You can see a van charging gracelessly at you, intent on doing whatever is necessary to protect Steven; the face, determined albeit terrified, that you glimpsed through the windshield for an instant as you instinctively lashed back with a wall of water. The round eyes, the small nose with the slits for nostrils –

And you finally know what Greg is to Steven.

"I actually met this guy back when we were both supervillains," Dr. Drakken is saying when you come back around to listening. "Us and a whole lot of other evildoers." Though the wiggle of his eyebrow contains only mischief, you accept his pronouncement. "They were – in a way – the family I never had."

"So – you can create your own family?" You think back to the Crystal Gems, gathered lovingly around Steven, and something knots inside you.

Drakken tips his head over to the right. "Well – sort of. You can legally adopt people who aren't biologically related to you. Or you can just hang around with people and think of them as your family."

Your bare feet dig absently at the sand. The sound of it is as refreshing as a sea breeze. "Who was in your villain family?" you ask. "Do you still talk to them?"

Dr. Drakken stiffens himself, as you have seen many Gems do upon leaving the battlefield, bracing for when the next skirmish will hit. "Well, let's see. There was a man who had monkey hands and feet – and a lot of issues. There was a guy who used exploding golf balls…golf is a sport, and it's usually pretty boring, unless the balls start exploding. There was a biogeneticist who specialized in combining animals. Another mad scientist like me, only much crueler and with far better luck – though lacking my underdog appeal, may I say – and Shego. The two friends I mentioned. My cousin. A professional villain sponsor. And – oh, yes, towards the end, there was this strange gal who could shapeshift.

"I hate shapeshifting." He appears to quiver inside his own skin, rearing back away from the idea. "It's so…sneaky. She could be sitting right next to you at any given moment, disguised as your best friend or your poodle or _any_ thing!"

Anxiety licks between your shoulders. Homeworld would not deem a full disclosure necessary at this point for any reason – except that Dr. Drakken has been nothing but open with you, and you cannot degrade his offering by returning it with anything less.

You take a deep whiff of the air you don't need, since it appears to have a calming effect on this planet's life-forms. "I can shapeshift," you confess.

"Oh." Drakken does not sound angry, although his tone is lacking its usual perk. "Really?"

"Yes. All of us can. It's…it's part of being a Gem."

Drakken's eyes flick slightly to the right. " _Do_ you?" And you can sense it in him – he distrusts this shapeshifting girl – and you do not want him transferring that wariness to you, even though you understand. Your people are always easily identifiable by their colors and their gem locations, but humans rarely have such distinguishing features. To sit beside a person, an animal even, not knowing whether they were actually the disguise of an entirely different being…a dishonorable one, by the sounds of it –

"No," you answer truthfully. Many stars have collapsed since you last shapeshifted. "Not very often. And if I ever do, I'll let you know it's me, okay?"

Drakken appears to settle somewhat. He smiles at you, tentatively but with a glow brighter than any that's ever sprung from a non-magical origin. "All right, then. Thank you," he says.

You dip your chin at him to motion him on.

"As for your question…yes, sometimes I still see some of them. Mostly the ones who reformed like I did after the alie – after the _Lorwardians_ invaded," Drakken continues, hands further animating the rise and fall of his voice. "Quite a few did, too. Not to brag, but I really started something. The ones who stayed evil – I try to avoid them. Not because I hate them or anything…well, maybe I hate a few of them. But mostly it's just awkward because we want such different things now; it couldn't work."

You nod again, reactions squirming in each others' grasps like an unstable fusion. You are happy because you want no negative influences in Dr. Drakken's life. Yet shattered friendships have gouged ever-deepening cracks into your planet's society, and you don't wish that friction on anyone. You gentle your fingers to lay them on his arm.

He doesn't pull away.

Elsewhere down the beach, you spot a unit – a _family_ , Drakken called them, and that word does seem to better capture a sense of closeness; of unity; of finding comfort in each other's nearby warmth. There is a man – _father_ – and a woman – _mother_ – and two young boys – _sons_ – tumbling and wrestling in the sand until it's ensnared in their hair and coating their sandals.

Also with them is someone else you can't put a word to. An old woman – and it feels strange to refer to her as "old," when she is probably a hundredth of your age, but she is stooped, seamed like tree bark, and white-haired. A momentary sadness for how quickly humans deteriorate is tempered by what a kindly appearance it gives her.

"Dr. Drakken?" You pinch at the fabric above his elbow and point with your other hand toward the family. "The old woman – what's she?"

"We-eeellll." Drakken purses his lips thoughtfully. "I don't know her, but I'm guessing she's a grandparent. A parent of a parent. She's a grand _mother_ , to be precise."

"How does being from an earlier generation make her grand?" you ask.

Drakken shrugs. "Just something people say, I guess."

You nod to let him know humans' strange speech patterns aren't his fault, and you continue to watch the family as they spread out a cloth and place a wooden basket on it. The basket opens at the top, and from it they produce wedges and lines and spheres of food. The mother is insisting her sons cleanse their hands with some sort of liquid potion before eating, despite their protests. The grandmother chuckles to herself as she pulls out paper – _plates_ , you remember from your visit to the pizza shop.

The word _daughter_ ripples through your identity like a rock dropped in water.

You turn your attention to Dr. Drakken, squinting as the sun's rays are at their most blinding right above his black head of near-curls. "Tell me more about your mother," you say.

"My mother." Drakken coughs his throat clear, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. His words still creak like a rusty old hinge when he says, "My mother was always there for me after my father left. She went out and got a job, and back then there weren't a lot of jobs for ladies!"

Despite his outrage, you are unable to fathom this. You have never known a job run by anyone _but_ "ladies."

"She calls me once a week during the winter to make sure I'm wearing long underwear. That's – that's – eerrrgh –" the pink patches again spurt across Drakken's cheeks – "underwear's what you wear under your clothes and over your skin. She always makes my favorite foods when I come home for the weekend. She…every time I hurt myself, she _still_ offers to kiss it and make it better!"

You feel yourself coming to attention. "Does she have healing saliva, too? Like Steven?"

"Whaa – no. It's some strange irrational mother urge," Drakken responds, blinking. "She hugs me and squeezes me far too tightly, so I've developed this little move to kind of squirt out of her arms and climb over her head."

You laugh aloud.

"Oh, you think it's funny?" Dr. Drakken scowls at you – playfully, you believe. "And the cheek-pinching! It never stops!"

Your eyes fasten once again on the intriguing flaw on his cheek. "Does that – does that hurt your…your cut there?" It is a silly question – from everything he has told you of this woman, she would never allow herself to harm her son – but you need to be certain.

"My cut?" Drakken repeats. He touches his cheeks gingerly, as though expecting to find a fresh, oozing wound there. "Oh – this?" His fingers swing across the sweeping, jagged shape. "No, that's a scar. It healed weird, so it's permanent, but it doesn't hurt anymore. Doesn't feel anything anymore, actually."

"So…you can touch it and nothing happens?" You press your own fingers, vibrating with curiosity, to your sides until you receive an answer:

"Nope. I mean, yes, I can touch it; and no, nothing happens. It just feels all weird and scabby and rough. It hurt a lot when I first got it, though."

You look at the scar, etched deep and dark against his sunny, sky-colored skin and a deep shudder rolls through you, imagining how a slice that devastating must have felt, without even a gem to retreat into from the pain. "How did you get it?" you say.

Dr. Drakken's grin is shamefaced, matching the returning pink. "Well…actually, I was working on a machine of mine, using a blade and then my cheek itched, so I scratched it – with the hand that was holding the blade – that I forgot I was using – so….yes."

You plaster a hand to your mouth. "That's terrible! How did you recover?"

"Shego was there, thank goodness. She keeps a clear head – which means she stays calm, not that her skull's transparent. She took me to the hospital, which is where humans go when they get _extremely_ sick or _really_ hurt –" Drakken pops his fingers wide for emphasis – "and they stitched me up."

"Like a quilt?" you ask. The image of a primitive Earth sewing needle closing his wound puts a bitter coat on your tongue.

"Sort of. They're special medical stitches, though. They give you a shot beforehand, so it doesn't hurt when they sew you up. And that makes it stop bleeding and then you don't die," Drakken ends cheerily, half-standing with one knee caving into a miniature sand dune.

"Does this happen to other people?" you say. You are not sure why you pose this question; you are not ready to grasp the enormity of humans' pain.

"Oh, yes." Drakken's hair-tail bobs at you. "All the time – well, not _all_ the time, but it's rare for a person to get through their life without ever needing stitches."

You try to shift your attention away from the black mark on his cheek where his skin was once torn. "Do they all have scars?"

"A lot of them," Drakken says. "But most of them are pink or tannish…harder to see, at any rate. My skin doesn't do anything the way it's supposed to anymore." It seems a grim pronouncement, but he says it with what could be mistaken for fondness. "So, you know, coming so soon after turning blue, I was really self-conscious about my scar for awhile."

"I like it," you murmur, suddenly shy. You are not accustomed to tolerating human imperfections, less still about embracing them. You examine your fingerprints for proof that you are the same Lapis with whom Drakken shared his ice cream last week.

Dr. Drakken's kind eyes steer down toward his toes, yet you are fairly certain the, "Oh. That's good," he tosses out is meant for you. "I didn't at first. Then I told myself it made me look tough…but I didn't fully get over it until my mother made me a teddy bear that had a scar just like mine."

He recoils, hand slapped over mouth as if he has just released some grand secret. Your instincts rise, along with the droplets of wings toward the surface of your gem and the fine downy hairs tickling just above, between your shoulder blades – you have flashes of Homeworld and its clandestine battle tactics that must never be revealed to an outsider. And what you have seen of bears depict them as frightful creatures.

But Dr. Drakken, fiery as he is, is not a warrior type; you have seen that.

And so you still your fear, push it back down inside you. It has been so long since you suppressed dread that you are amazed you can still recall how.

"What's a teddy bear?" you say. Your feet stay planted in the sand, toes curled under for its coolness, not churning in preparation of an escape.

Drakken kneads the back of his neck. "I'll tell you – but only if you promise not to laugh."

You frown for a moment before remembering how some humans – the brutes who have apparently not died out with the dinosaurs and the dodo birds – use laughter as a spear to the throat. Sinking back into a sit and crossing your legs before you, you say, "Is it funny?"

" _I_ don't think so," Drakken grumbles.

You tilt your head at him. "Then I won't laugh."

Your word seems to seal it, a fresh wax stamp locking into place around a contract not to be broken. Drakken's face fills with light – as though he's keeping his own supply of it somewhere in that delicate humanity – and he begins again:

"A teddy bear is a small stuffed animal. Not a real animal filled with stuffing – though some people do that, too, and it's a little weird, if you ask me. But, oh, I'm getting off topic! A teddy bear is a small toy made of fabric and stuffed with cotton – from plants – and sewn up so that it all stays together. They sort of...sort of help you feel safe."

Envisioning the bears you have seen in Homeworld records, fangs too long and deadly to belong to anything uncorrupted, you cannot absorb the words. They float in your head, foggy, ends frayed and denying connection. "But – why would a toy bear make you feel safe? Aren't humans and bears usually in conflict? Can't bears hurt a human child?" you ask.

Drakken nods thoughtfully, lips tucking and pursing like he is savoring another lollipop. "Yes, but have you ever seen a bear _cub_? A baby?"

"No," you have to say.

"Well, they're adorable. And mother bears are really good mothers. They look after the cubs all day and at night, they cuddle up to keep them warm and they all go to sleep. I think that's why teddy bears are made to cuddle." Drakken twiddles his fingers together, excitement clearly rising with each tap. "Ooh! And, actually, they came about because one of our presidents saw a baby bear when he was out hunting and thought it was just too cute to shoot."

You grab one thread of that. "What's a president?"

"A leader. In this case, he's in charge of the United States of America, which is the very country we're in right now." Dr. Drakken wiggles his eyebrow at you. "His name was Teddy Roosevelt, and people were so inspired by the story – tough guy didn't shoot an easy kill – that they made _teddy_ bears."

Silence reigns for a moment. So, a president can be the equivalent of a Commander. Maybe even the equivalent of a Diamond, depending on how large a _country_ is on a planetary scale.

And a human…a human had forfeited a chance to destroy something meager, useless to him; something that could grow up to be an enemy. The rest of the humans found it – inspiring?

"Steven has a teddy bear," you say. You somehow realize you are smiling – you always smile when you speak of Steven. "I never saw what he did with it, though. Do you – do you take it with you when you…" the word hides in the back of your mind for a moment, "…sleep?"

Another concept you know so little of. How can a human willingly place themselves in such an intensely vulnerable position? Where do their thoughts go when they achieve unconsciousness, or do they switch off entirely? Somehow, their organs – decoration on a Gem, vital for their kind – receive commands to keep functioning….but how?

"Usually," Drakken says. "I mean, you can do whatever you want with one. Some kids carry them around all day." His voice drops to a hoarse grunt. "Teddy bears are mostly for children. That's why I was afraid you'd laugh."

Forty-two still sounds incredibly young to you. You shrug. "Do they help the children?"

Drakken chuckles. "I know they help _me_. You can wake up from a bad dream – _any_ bad dream, the worst dream in the GALAXY – and then you reach for them, and they're there. Just touching them instantly reminds you you're not in a cell." His eyelashes squint. "Or a mirror?" he ventures.

You have never experienced dreams, bad _or_ good, so you cannot pretend you understand all of what he says. But if they bring you up short of breath, arms wrapped around legs, body rocking to ease the deep pit of terror, wings expanding and folding back just to prove you can summon them, you are undamaged, you are fine –

Then, yes, you know why a person would need to reach for a fake baby bear.

Especially one handmade by a _mother_.

"I want one," you say. It is you – your high pitch, your slight quiver between syllables, your touch of firmness – but you almost do not believe you have said it.

Drakken's head tilts again, to the other side this time. "A teddy bear?"

That is one possible meaning, and it is a true one. "Yes."

His eyes are so soft as he looks down at you, much as this president Teddy's must have been when he stared down the barrel of a weapon and was moved to hold his fire. If they were hands, they would be a touch too gentle to frighten you.

Why are the only kind eyes who have looked upon you recently _human_ eyes?

You close yours, straining for the memory of lighter Gem eyes that were once bright with compassion toward their own. But the reflection is murky, as if streaked with the tears you were never able to cry, dominated by the flat indifference you saw hidden away behind flashing screens and streamlined visors.

A Gem's greatest fear – worse than being cracked, worse than being shattered – is being corrupted. Homeworld's anti-corruption tech is well-funded and has surely only become more advanced while you were away. And yet, though the technology would undoubtedly pronounce the new generation of Gems clean…they appear to have been corrupted from some other source.

Steven, however, is the least corrupt person you have ever met of _either_ race. If he has something to hold in the night, it becomes vital for you to have one as well.

"I think I might even _need_ one," you say.

Dr. Drakken dusts his small hands together. The dry sand showers from them; the wet remains, clinging to the lines on his palms. You were Taught that these helped humans to grasp and lift objects. Now you wonder if they, too, are unique. "Ah, yes, I suspect as much. Here, we'll see."

He reaches into the folds of his coat and returns with what you identify as a miniature version of a human temperature gauge. When he pokes it toward your mouth, you retreat, abruptly, instinctively, before the wounded look in his eyes reminds you he is nothing like those who all but trampled you into the surface of what was once your home. You muster what courage you have and allow him in to rest the gauge beneath your tongue. The tip is cool, but the chill goes no deeper than your skin.

The strange device beeps a few times, each beep louder and more pressing than the last, before making a popping sound and sending up a stream of tiny clouds.

The barest stirrings of fear whisper inside you. You hope this wasn't an important test – or an instrument he was too fond of.

Drakken guides the gauge back out of your mouth, gives it several shakes, and then squints at the display screen. "Hmmm," he says. "Hmmm. Well, either it's worse than I thought, or this thermometer just doesn't do Gems." He flashes you a smile. "Probably the latter."

His cheeks are so scrunched, it almost demands you laugh, even while still lapping the taste of cold metal from under your tongue. _Thermometer_. You make a note of it.

"In either case" – Drakken grimly tucks the thermometer back into his fabric folds – "you, Miss Lazuli, are in dire need of a teddy bear."

Reflections of various mounds of plush at the toy store swarm you. Boxes boasting of their Advantages, summoned with a squeeze of the stomach or a press of a hand, drawn from round, flat objects contracting under your fingers. They are too pliable to be gemstones, but it is all you can picture having that shape, that power.

The note of firmness in your voice surprises even you when you say, "None of those that repeat what you say or light up and flash." They remind you too much of Homeworld, taking everything that was once soft and glass-fronting it, stocking it with advanced weaponry.

Drakken nods as if he has been tracking your thoughts. "No, no, definitely not." He lays one hand across your forehead. His fingers are warm and sticky, dappled with sand, fragile bones inside. "Case this serious, you need one homemade. Preferably by my mother."

You gasp. A human commissioning a gift for you from a relation of his? You cannot guess the meaning, did not know humans had DNA bonds until just today, but anyone can tell the magnitude of it.

"She won't mind?" you ask. It seems odd, nearly wrong, to ask a favor from a species to whom you have never given anything, unless you include relinquishing the ocean you had stolen to begin with. It is hard enough to request favors from other Gems anymore.

"Mind?" Drakken's grin morphs into a body-shaking laugh. "She'd be delighted! She's been after me for so long to make friends, bring them home, let her mother them, too…"

He wipes his eyes as if happiness has been leaking from the same corners you once watched squeeze tears. "Oh, Lapis, she'd _love_ to make a teddy bear for you."

And Drakken's words are so uncharacteristically low, comfortably soaked with a new breed of softness, that trust cradles your body like a warm wave.

"Steven's had a name," you say. "I think." You fixate your gaze on a dune above Drakken's left shoulder and examine the memory. He addressed the bear as something – it was so brief, all you can truly recall is recognizing that this was a child who would talk to anything on the chance that it could reply. The first hope you had experienced in thousands of years crowded your already-cramped quarters. "Should mine have a name?"

"The experts recommend it, yes," Drakken says. He strokes his chin in thought, jerky little movements that you enjoy. "But you should probably see it first before you name it. Like a pet."

Why? Every Gem is named according to their kind. You could never be called anything other than Lapis Lazuli. Why would you?

And yet there is no gem called Steven. Or Dr. Drakken, for that matter. How do humans choose which words to name their – their children? Sons and daughters? Some must be repeated, and how will they keep track? Rubies share names, but they also share appearances, voices, and practically every other facet of identity. Pearls vary in appearance, but they are all still, save for the one who stored you in her head, virtually interchangeable With such a wide variety of humans, you could meet multiple people with the same names and nothing else in common….

Is there someone else out there named Steven?

You grab one question from that swirl and focus on it: "What's _your_ bear's name?"

Drakken gnaws on his lower lip, as though he can pry the answer loose with his teeth. "Sir Fuzzymuffin," he mumbles.

"I like it," you say.

It is soft. It is safe. Like his wiggling, squirmy, sandy presence.

"Do humans name themselves?" you say. "Or can they not do that either right after they…emerge?"

"Bingo to the second!" Drakken rocks up and down, finger pulsing in your direction. "Babies can't even talk for months and months after they're born. Their parents name them."

"And do they wait to see them before they give them a name?"

"Sometimes," Drakken says, shrugging. "A lot of times, they just pick out a name for a boy and one for a girl and wait to see which one it is. You can't always go by first impressions, anyway, especially of a newborn. When they first – uh – come out – they're not very pretty. Usually all red and wrinkly and screaming and goopy and just ugh!" He shivers all the way down the unwieldy length of his arms. "You've gotta wait a couple hours for them to get cute."

"Oh." You had envisioned them with a glossy shine, eyes bright and invigorated, even in the helplessness you cannot picture. Gems are wobbly and ignorant when they emerge, needing instruction, but far from helpless.

Less helpless than you probably are right now, standing there without any idea of how his species begins and develops. You hesitate, take the hem on your top between your fingertips and twist it slightly. "Do I – do I sound stupid when I ask all these questions?" you ask.

Dr. Drakken tilts his head, sending his hair into an utterly honest swing. "Sometimes a little," he says, "but I know you're not." He kicks some clumps of sand from the bottoms of his sandals. "I mean, I'd probably sound even stupider if I ever went to Homeworld."

You smile. He remembered this time.


	7. Sand Castle

**~Hey! Did you think I'd fallen off the face of the Earth? Please forgive the long delay and enjoy this new chapter.**

 **Thanks to everyone who's been reviewing, including my very nice guest LordofCinders. :D~**

The next day, you learn another thing about your new friend Dr. Drakken:

This is not the name he was given at birth.

It begins when you bring up the question of multiple humans having the same names, when you ask if there is more than one person named Steven.

By the number of quick nods Drakken grants you, this must be an easy yes. "Oh, yes. Probably scads of them. I myself know someone named Steven. Well, actually, his name is Steve, but that's usually a nickname for Steven, so he's probably a Steven."

 _Steve._ Well, you can see how it was formed, cleaving the last letter from the word. But it sounds foreign to you, dull and distant, a fading ember as opposed to the lively spark of your Steven.

"How do two people with the same name not get confused for each other?" you ask.

Drakken is standing on a clump of beach grass; he chuckles whenever the breeze tosses the strands across his toes. "Ohhh, good question. That's why we have what are known as _last names_."

" _Last_ names?" you repeat.

"More formally known as _surnames_." Drakken's posture straightens, until you are looking squarely into the bump in the center of his throat. You prefer the face view. "See, the Steve I know, his surname is Barkin. So his full name is Steve Barkin. It's a distinguisher, because your Steven's last name probably isn't Barkin – well, I can't say for sure."

This makes sense. "How do humans choose their last names?" you say.

"Well, traditionally, they get passed down through families," Drakken says. He is backlit by the sun, seemingly glowing with knowledge of Earth. Though it may be a miserable planet, it is fascinating as well. "Like, take my former arch-nemesis Kim Possible. First name – Kim, chosen by her parents. Last name – Possible. Her mother and father and her brothers _all_ have the last name Possible. Because –"

"Brothers?" You hate to interrupt, but you cannot let this small puzzle be swept away in the rush of his explanation.

"Ah. Yes. Brothers and sisters are your parents' other children. Brothers are boys; sisters are girls."

"Oh." You frown. "I don't think Steven has any of those."

How could he? One human/Gem mixture is enough of a rarity. Surely it won't be repeated anytime soon. Not with Rose Quartz –

"Anyway, _traditionally_ , a woman takes her husband's last name when she gets married." Drakken raises both hands above his head as if you are brandishing a sword, when you haven't even moved. "Not to belittle women or anything. It just makes it easier to keep track of who's related to whom. There are a lot of women nowadays who keep their own last name or hyphenate it with their husband's anyway."

You stare, silent, across the water. Human relationships sound so complicated. The people who brought you to life, along with any other creatures they've created since becoming… _married_ , a term you have a vague understanding of but still feels too shaky to support your weight.

"Is Drakken _your_ last name?" you ask. "Dr." sounds like a title that takes the place of a first name, but you are not sure.

Drakken's cheeks unexpectedly turn the color of Steven's shield. He glances down at the grass spiking between his feet. "Actually…Drakken is a name I took for myself when I grew up. My real name is Drew Lipsky. First name – Drew. Surname – Lipsky."

"Drew Lipsky," you murmur. The new combination of syllables is jarring yet sweet, like ice cream on your tongue.

Dr. Drakken – Drew Lipsky – cringes as though he is anticipating a blow to the temple.

"It's a nice name," you say, though you have little experience with what makes a name nice. "But you seem more like a Drakken."

His shoulders relax from their own spikes. "Yes. I thought so, too."

"So – where do last names come from?" you say. "I know they get passed on, but where did they come from _originally_?"

"Ah!" Drakken's face lights, and he thrusts a finger into the salt-kissed air. "An excellent question! A long, long time ago, people didn't really have last names, and you're right – it made them really easy to mistake for each other. They were identified as 'the sister of so-and-so' or 'the son of such-and-such,' and eventually some of those turned into last names. 'Johnson.' 'Neilson.'

"I don't know where 'Lipsky' comes from, exactly. And heaven knows about 'Possible.'" One corner of Drakken's lips points upward, while the other angles down. "I _do_ know a lot of them also came from their occupations. 'Archer,' 'Weaver,' 'Mason.' There were quite a few blacksmiths and ironsmiths, which is why 'Smith' is such a common last name down here."

You nod and close your eyes. Images are wafting into your memory, golden-framed pictures of a happier time. Of a more open, radiant Homeworld, with more tinkering and less mastery. Where the technology would more likely than not stall and stick, causing the Gem working it to growl in playful frustration and give it a good hard kick.

Now, now the technology rarely fails, but when it does – it is as if your people, your once proud people, have been disconnected from their very life-force.

"You'll notice that those are all pretty old names," Drakken continues. "Middle Ages or even earlier. That's why you don't see people named 'Programmer' or 'Engineer.'"

You release a sigh, one you didn't notice forming, from your nose. "Thank goodness."

Drakken's jaw goes slack. "What did you just say?"

You have forgotten, temporarily, who you are talking to. Dr. Drakken may be one of the kindest humans you have ever interacted with, but he is also a scientist. Technology is the backbone of his business, the more advanced the better.

He doesn't know. He doesn't _know_ …

You shape the new Homeworld in your brain: Strange hums and clicks and whirs winding into a low-key throb across a sky that was once silent. Giant Injectors poised for their next Duty, the blades sharper in the starlight; you had forgotten how sharp, and deadly-looking. You attempted to walk away from it, down a road that ran north-south when you last lived there. In many thousands of years it was repaved many times and it ran east-west now. You realized your mistake and corrected it – not, however, before bouncing off the elbow of a particularly burly Quartz Gem who rasped at you to "watch where you're going, brat."

You shape the scene in your brain, and then it hits you that you have no method of easily replaying it for Dr. Drakken.

For the briefest of moments, you miss the relative simplicity of the mirror.

"Technology just messes things up," you hear yourself saying instead. "The more it advanced, the meaner the people on my planet got."

Drakken rubs the spot over his eyebrow. "Well, we aren't _on_ your planet now, Lapis! This is Earth, and technology has been used for a lot of good things!" The buoys of his voice are no longer gently bobbing; they are a typhoon, gaining volume and losing control. "People can get tested for awful diseases now…"

You begin to shake. "And then what? What do they do once they find out you're defective?"

Homeworld has always scanned unknown Gems for corruptions. Sometime during your imprisonment, they implemented scans for cracks as well – undamaged, hairline fractures, deep, deep gouges. What they do with the cracked ones, you do not wish to learn. Centuries ago, it would have been their prerogative to fix you, but…now…

A small clump of humans walk by just then, faces pasted into the rectangular objects of their communication. They barely glance up in time to avoid hitting one of those octagon signs that populate Earth's street corners, do not even speak to one another as they scroll through whatever information is holding them captive.

You gesture toward them. "See? They're not paying any attention to each other – or to anything that's not on their screens."

Your words wring out tight.

Drakken leans in and shoves his eyes level to yours. He is close enough that you can see weary lines of red receding back toward the pupil like fissures from a foundational crack. Tiny black dots of sun-wear that he did not have when you first met freckling his cheeks. The cold scent of ice cream on his otherwise hot breaths. "Not all technology is bad, Lapis!" he bursts.

You back up one shaken step.

The instant your heel dips into the sand, Dr. Drakken recoils and slaps a hand over his mouth. The red lines bulge in what could be fright. "You know what?" he mumbles into his palm. "That was rude. That was too loud. I need – I need to go cool off."

And then he turns and scampers a few meters away as if a predator is chasing him. You do not think it is because of you.

You stand there another Earth-minute, wanting to run after him, to tell him it is not him you fear; it is conflict itself. But you have no framework to build on. Arguments are for Crystal Gems with conflicting loyalties, not for faithful citizens of Homeworld.

The best you can do, right here, right now, is breathe the scent of the ocean as it blows your way. Listen to the rhythm of the waves beating the shore, _slap-pull, slap-pull, slap-pull_. It calms you. You hope it can calm Dr. Drakken, too.

You plunge your knuckles into the sand, over and over, pull them back up and let the sand drizzle through your fingers. You close your eyes and you search for the Homeworld that now exists only in your memory. The one where love outshines the imperfections that, you are beginning to realize, were more substantial than you ever thought.

When you can no longer abide the ache that threads the length of your back, you switch your attention to Dr. Drakken. He brushes aside the fine, dry grains of sand to reveal the wetter, denser layer beneath; he gathers a handful and gels it together; he molds it, creating wavy dents in the top with his fingertips. The movements of his small, flighty hands have more certainty, more purpose.

As you watch, Drakken forms a squat wall and raises two taller towers on either side. The commonplace, sun-warmed sand takes on a regal look.

It straightens you out of the fold that curves your shoulders inward toward your chest.

Drakken scoots on his knees over to the south tower and begins to construct another wall. This one, though, is too gritty in texture, too thin to hold together, and it collapses in a runny heap. Drakken lets out a mournful howl and pumps both fists at the sky, as if the few inklings of clouds are to blame for this failure. His voice rumbles even over the slap of the waves, but from his kneeling position, with flower petals ringing his face, he appears feisty yet helpless – a single, disconnected Ruby.

Still, you understand what it is to be frightened by part of yourself. Your own temper is usually small and meek, frozen inside you – but when it is activated, it spills over its banks, defying any attempt to control it.

So you wait, fingering the sand, legs furled under you as though anticipating flight, listening to the sea-birds cry for things you cannot give them. Drakken's expression becomes smoother, his pace quicker, his hands more at ease. Your curiosity lifts higher, pulling cautious joy with it. His chest ceases to heave and instead resumes a level tempo, its rising and falling no longer alarming.

Once another of his walls crumbles and he responds with a silent flop horizontal to the turrets he's already built, peace fills you like warm water. You could not explain why if questioned…

…But you know it's okay to approach him now.

You make your way across the beach; around small, shallow tide pools whose clear water reveals small anemones and sea urchins; steer over a hermit crab in a scuttling hurry to find a new home. The gap between you and Dr. Drakken closes, step by tiny step, until you are near enough to hear the peculiar pop in his knees when he shifts from one to the other.

He glances up. His eyes will only meet yours out of the corners.

"What are you doing?" you say.

The ends of Drakken's eyebrow, his single eyebrow where most have two, crook in opposite directions. "Building a sand castle."

It is softer, somehow, than he usually speaks, as if he is deliberately hushing whatever lurks beneath his surface.

 _Castle_. Somewhere in your millennia of memories, it triggers an understanding. That _is_ what it looks like, a marvelous building worthy of the aristocracy – the ones who are not mass-produced. The angles, though, are austere and off-putting, foreign in their Earthliness.

"Can I help?" you ask.

You realize how badly you long to.

Drakken still won't look at you, but the half of his mouth that faces you quivers up at the edge. "Yes," he says.

And there is no technology corrupting his buoy-words, no sign that you have cracked that which is precious to him. The skin on his forehead is puckered, still imprisoned by stress, though not a crevice of irreparable damage.

You reach down into the sand, following Dr. Drakken's example, rooting for the more malleable dampness. It gives surprisingly easily under even your timid touch, leaving the imprint of your fingers behind, every line and bump preserved. Familiarity shoots across your mind, but it is so far away and vague this might as well be the first time you have ever left your mark.

A laugh comes out of you, a squeaky, bewildered thing.

And then your hands move over the clump, squeezing and stretching and rolling, all in short jerks. Over the next several Earth-minutes, though, your knuckles relax, permitting color to wash back into them, and the sand seems to grow lighter.

You mold it with precision, forming six-sided figures with rounded corners, every variety of crystal shape known to your people. The slight incline of warp pads, elevated and notched by the barest of steps. The sleek, lean shanks of broadcast towers – short, as you recall them being once.

Once when it was tender rather than calculated.

It is as though all the anger, the fear and the loneliness, you have felt since you returned to an unrecognizable home seeps through your fingers the way humans secrete sweat when the heat is too much for them. What you are left with is gentle and bittersweet.

You shapeshift a pair of lungs, uncharacteristically spontaneously, just to sigh out into the salty air.

And then you know – this is the facet of Homeworld that you will always claim. Not courageously or passionately – you have never been either of those things, and you do not see yourself starting anytime soon – but with whatever tendrils of strength and hope you still possess.

You sense the focus of Dr. Drakken's eyes on your back, then shifting over slightly to land on your creations. When you turn they are close, so curiously close that you can distinguish the uniform black at the center of all humans' eyes from the softer black smudged around them. The sun plays over them in a way that should not be remarkable.

"This is traditional Gem architecture," you explain, not boasting but proud.

Drakken responds with an appropriately solemn nod. "Well, I like it," he says. "Very geometrically fascinating."

You understand enough to receive it as a compliment.

As your fingers twist for more of the cool, moist sand, they are suddenly interrupted by the presence of Drakken's fingers resting atop them. Before the touch has even traveled from your illusionary limbs to be felt in your gem, he's picked your hand up in his, given it a quick squeeze – surprisingly gentle. The soft, organic feel of him is refreshing.

Drakken says nothing, and yet he communicates so much. You marvel that with nothing more than a simple press and release, he has both apologized and forgiven you.

You marvel – and you squeeze back.

When Drakken pulls his hand back, it grasps at the air, seemingly uncertain of where it should go next. "You – I – um – your eyes." His voice sounds as if he can't figure out where to put it, either. "They get all sparkly when you talk about Homeworld. And then they get sad."

"Oh?"

Drakken does more than shrug; he spreads his arms wide as his shoulders rise and grins until his mouth is one squiggled, skinny line. "I think I like them better sparkly," he whispers loudly.

The breeze tousles several strands of your hair, and you push them back, wondering about his vision of you. It hasn't yet been worth venturing close to something hated and reflective just for a glimpse of an image that has remained unchanged for thousands of years.

You and Dr. Drakken return to your sandcastle, each assembling the prettiest designs of your native planets. You add the oval doors you remember so fondly, while Drakken finds scraps of seaweed and weaves them among the turrets in an elegant fashion.

It becomes a palace fit for a Diamond. Still, as Drakken himself concedes, it is missing something. He scampers down the beach and returns with a sliver of driftwood, which he pokes grandly into the castle's highest tower.

"There!" Drakken declares. He parks his hands somewhere on the torso as flat and unchanging as that driftwood and grunts with satisfaction. "It's perfect!"

And he looks so content, sounds so pleased, that you believe him.

You lower yourself, one skirt swish at a time, to your own stomach and rest your chin on your open palms. It is a pose you have not felt safe enough to assume since before the War.

Something seems to skim across the surface of your gem, then flutter away. There was a time, back before Dr. Drakken was even – was _born_ the term he used? – when you would have unquestioningly have given such an imperial model to Blue Diamond to show your devotion. The picture of her shrouded in her portable palace, her eyes cold blue behind the veil, devoid of emotion as she ordered an insolent Ruby to be broken, skirts along the boundaries of your trust: Your trust that Blue Diamond was a fair and kind ruler; that her every action was justified; that her decrees were to be followed without hesitation.

As you gaze at your castle – what you and Drakken have built together – all you can envision Blue Diamond noticing is the slightly sagging south wall or the scallops that Drakken's fingers have carved with more enthusiasm than even spacing.

And you would rather give it to Steven.

"Yes," you say. "It's perfect."

Drakken laughs out loud, a delighted boom, and fiddles with the sand feathering the peaks of his hair. "I _have_ to get a picture of this with my phone!"

Picture? With a _phone_?

"Oh, drat," Drakken says, patting his pockets. A frown gathers on his face. "I must've left it back in the hovercraft."

That is a word you _are_ acquainted with, and you're impressed that he was able to build one using only Earth technology.

"Be right back!" Dr. Drakken calls, jogging up the beach, nearly tripping over clumps of dune grass.

"All right!" you say. You keep track of each other now.

And then it is just you, alone in the company of your ocean, beguiling you as its waves clap the shore and fizzle away, as if chanting your name: _lap-is, lap-is, lap-is_ , _lap-is_. It remains unchanged and loyal even after the centuries you spent apart, unlike so many others.

That is why your mind has floated somewhere else, why you only register the inevitable when you hear a volley of squawks behind you. The tide, moving to the phases of a moon that remains hidden, slinks toward your creation.

"Nooooo! No, no, no, no, no!" Dr. Drakken's hands flail aimlessly, the small shiny phone firmly encased in one. "The tide! No! Curse that tide! Not before I get a picture! Ple-ease!" With the exception of his mouth, he appears frozen.

You, for once, are not.

Rushing forward, you stop just short of the foam that respectfully bends around your ankles and thrust your hands in the air. The tide locks into place, deferring to your wishes. It pulses, heavy, against your fingertips.

You glance back at Dr. Drakken. His mouth is dangling open, as though to catch the stray beads of moisture. "Take the picture! Take the picture!" you call.

Drakken snaps his jaw back into place and lifts the phone, poking at buttons you cannot see, begging them to cooperate. Somewhere in the seethe of constrained water and the squawk of the seabirds overhead, you think you make out a distant _click_. It is followed by a wild whoop as Drakken punches a fist into the air: "I got it!"

You sigh and drop your arms. The tide washes in, devouring the shapes in the sand, pressing the castle back into its roots until it is nothing more than a memory. You feel the welcome release in your ears, between them, down through the vibration of your legs.

And then Drakken's loud voice crashes through.

"Lapis!" he says. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" He skitters, sandals spraying sand, up to you and his arms encircle you with all their long, narrow strength.

You are taken aback.

The word _hug_ , old and only familiar in a rusty, barnacle-encrusted way, comes to you. Your species has always been spare with affection, although a companionable hand-squeeze or a kiss on the forehead is not unheard of. Your only recollections of those last days, though, those dark days when the war was peaking, are of clutches and grabs, angry swipes. No one embraced on the battlefield.

And so you are surprised by how… _nice_ it is to receive Drakken's clumsy hug. On all sides of you rest comfortably loose folds of fabric, and a human framework, brittle yet unyielding, holds you there with its sweat and its joy; it is a shelter, not a prison.

That's when you hear the sound. Deep within the chest you are pressed against, there is a strong, steady thrum. There is a pattern to it – in and out, in and out, rise and fall, give and take.

You can vaguely remember being Taught, at some point, about human beings and their heartbeats – how essential it is; how even the slightest interruption can prove disastrous. But you were never told of its ebbs and flows, its resemblance to the ocean. You were never Taught that each human has a tiny version of the sea living inside them.

Peace nestles between your shoulders, stretching and loosening.

"You're welcome," you somehow say.

Drakken pulls back and wiggles his phone from hand to hand. "Now we should take a selfie!" he says. Facets etch into his forehead. "Or is it a groupie? I've never been able to tell which one is the proper…"

You shrug. Having never heard either term in your substantial lifetime, you aren't able to help him here.

It does not seem to trouble Drakken for longer than a second or two. He breaks back into his wide, gleaming grin and holds the phone at arm's length, poking more buttons with one hand. The other curls around your wrist and tugs you, as gently as his excitement can, to stand against his side. "All right, say cheese!" he says.

"Cheese?" you repeat. You've heard of it – a human food, somehow derived from milk – but what does it have to do with taking photographs? You wind up staring, your lower lip smashing into your cheek, as you face a blurred screen, bordered in white, that reflects what it sees.

"Sorry," Drakken says between chortles. "It's an Earth thing. Don't know where it got started – I think because saying the word 'cheese' makes your mouth look like it's smiling."

"Oh. Well –" your voice quiets – "I don't need that to make me smile." The one you give him is tentative but unforced.

And it is returned, doubled in size and in ease. "Okay, well, we'll take a nice smiley one, and then we can make funny faces, all right?" Drakken doesn't wait for you to respond, instead raising the phone high and far again. "Three – two – one – now!"

There is a brief blip – of white light, then blackness, and then back to the afternoon sunshine. Depicted on the strange little device Drakken holds are two blue faces, one jubilant to meet it, the other cautious but hopeful.

"Funny faces time!" Drakken declares. His eyes squint near shut, his tongue extending toward his chin as giggles shake it out of place. He is having such fun; you want to be a part of it.

You remind yourself that it is not a mirror, that it cannot capture you with the images it throws back. Gradually, your fingers stop vibrating against the hem of your skirt. You inflate your cheeks with some of Earth's gases, tinged with ocean salt, and wrinkle your nose.

Drakken laughs, a happy noise not unlike the one Steven's pink lion makes. The phone clicks and clicks and clicks.

When it is over – signaled by Drakken giving a satisfied grunt and tapping the option marked "Caption" – muscles your body hasn't had cause to shapeshift for centuries ache. You are warm, not from the heat shimmering off the boardwalk in the distance, not from your constantly regulated temperature, not the way humans are hot, and not uncomfortably so. There is a cool streak on your back, the sensation of happy wings just below the surface.

Dr. Drakken frowns to himself as he pecks at a letter-board. "Beach City Summer Vacation," he murmurs. "Dr. Drakken and. . ."

A dull ache prods at you, like a sword the renegade Pearl forgot to sharpen. For all his human frailty, he has something you will never have – a name; a – what did he call it? – a last name that ensures he will never go unidentified in a crowd.

He will never experience what you did: returning home, not sure if you're sprinting or flying in your haste to report back to your Diamond, until you are blocked by two Quartzes wielding weapons the likes of which you have never encountered before. Blurting out, "I'm here to see Blue Diamond."

And getting back, "Who are you?"

You braced yourself against the sword-pricks then; you suspected they would need to be reminded. It was the same after any prolonged absence. "Lapis Lazuli."

It hurts again – the Quartzes turning toward each other, the first one's questioning look and the second's harsh whisper, "Doesn't she already have one of those?" Both gazes, as hard as the gems embedded in the physical forms they have taken, reduced you to some useless thing salvaged from a shipwreck.

For a moment, you ceased to feel your own body at all, as if the whole thing were an illusion, right down to your consciousness, and you might just dry up and blow away.

"…L-A-P-I-S L-A-Z-U-L-I…" Dr. Drakken turns the phone in your direction, brow ridged again. "That's how you spell your name, right?"

"Yes." To see your name in writing again after so long anchors your feet again. You are the only Lapis he knows.

Drakken cleanses his forehead of sweat, perhaps so more can take its place. "Okay, good. See, I have to ask because I have this thing called _dyslexia_ …"

This word is not _hug_ ; this word's unfamiliarity is total, and it has a foul, menacing hiss to it that pulls you down like a riptide. "What's that?" you say. "Is it a corruption?"

You search his face, remembering that blue is not its original color, wondering if whatever "lab accidents" gave him this and his petals and his scar have also slowly burrowed their way down into his core health.

Dr. Drakken seems surprised at your sudden shift in tone. "No, no! Well…maybe just a little one…nothing to worry about." He taps the delicate pulse on the side of his head, the one humans call a _temple_ , though it bears no resemblance to a holy place. "It's only in my brain – it gets overwhelmed from being so brilliant, see – sometimes, it switches around letters or numbers or even whole words, especially when I get upset." He flashes a broad smile whose message – _Everything is all right_ – could not be more clear if it were transmitted by an ancient Wailing Stone.

"Oh." You've never heard of this problem. It is definitely not one of the warning signs you were Taught to watch for. "Does it hurt you?" you ask.

As he looks at you, as he says, "Wha -? Oh…nope. Not at all. It just makes it a little hard to read and write sometimes," Drakken's enthusiasm gentles.

And you believe it, because dishonesty, one of the more confusing human traits, has never managed to settle in Dr. Drakken. It would not coexist easily with the glow upon his face. One would push the other away, like Gems too at odds with one another to fuse.

"Lapis?" Drakken sticks his phone back into his pocket in order to twiddle his fingertips together. They swoop with no real pattern, never seeming to make the same movements twice. "I just wanted to say one more thing about the technology…stuff…and then I'll drop it."

Since he isn't holding anything that can be dropped, and since his use of "one more thing" tells you the discussion will be limited, you are able to gather what he probably means. You nod him on.

Dr. Drakken grunts and coughs and expels "Ahem"s from his throat, as if his words must be carefully weighted and presented with a clear path before even one of them can come out. " _Most_ people use technology for good." He holds up his hands – _I don't want to fight anymore!_ Steven proclaims in your mind. "But my entire career as a mad scientist-slash-supervillain was built on the fact that it can be terrifying in the wrong hands."

Though his eyes are no deeper black than usual, they appear it. They look beyond your shoulder and the light piece of fabric tied over it – far beyond, to whatever the past may harbor, to whatever has put those invisible shadows in them.

Then they come down to rest on you again, and they come alive again, bright and tuned to the right now, no longer parsing through recorded data as you have seen Pearls do. His grin returns, in increments, and he rubs the back of his neck. "Which…I don't know how I forgot that," Drakken continues. "Just goes to show you how bad my memory can be…"

His voice is bobbing once more, rising and falling with the tide. You glance down at your own hands, spread and hoping.

It would be unbalanced, unfair even, for him alone to concede, you know this. Dr. Drakken is more than a new curiosity to study; he has become a very dear friend. What can you give him that is still true?

"Well," you say at last, "if you still love it so much, it must not be _all_ bad."

Drakken laughs, the sound pouring out of him as though it has been waiting for the perfect moment to emerge. "Thank you," he says, and his foot pokes at the drenched sand. "We make a mean sand castle, don't we?"

You frown. "I thought it was a _nice_ one." You have see mean sand sculptures, cast by the lost and frustrated Desert Glass.

A sliver of a growl, wrapped around a chuckle, curls its way toward you. "Yes, yes, yes, it was a _very_ nice sand castle," Drakken amends. "Sometimes we – I mean, us humans – say 'That was a mean…' whatever, when all we're really trying to say it that it was a stunning example of that type of thing."

"Oh. So it's a good thing." You don't understand how or why this works in human language, but you find yourself soaking up his explanation much as the anemones in the tide pools soak up moisture.

Drakken shrugs. "Don't ask me – I didn't invent it." He turns toward the nearest post, the chunky heel of his sandal indenting the sand that has now almost become sludge, his posture happily edgy again. "Ohhhh. . . look at this, Lapis! There's a concert down on the beach in a couple of days! That's right before I have to leave town! Oooh, I wonder if The Elements will be in it. . . they were my favorite band when I was a teen –"

You don't know what a "teen" is, and you don't ask. The words _leave town_ form a vacuum around your hearing. Is this how humans would experience space? No wonder they aren't eager to venture beyond Earth.

"Have you heard any of their music?" You choose, you force yourself to focus on the buoys right here in Dr. Drakken's voice. "Ooh – I should take you down to the music store and play you a sample!"

He turns and heads up the beach, with such earnestness one might think his planet were in danger and he, the only hope. Drakken does not walk – he runs and skitters and staggers, and you can't help but wonder how he approached the Lorwardians when he stepped up to defeat them. Surely it was nothing like the stride of a Gem onto the battlefield.

You follow him, glancing back once to take in the two pairs of footprints. Yours are longer and narrower, more widely spaced; his soft and stumbling, sometimes landing sideways.

Surprisingly, they meld quite nicely.


	8. Dance

**~One more fluffy chapter. Next time we'll switch over to Drakken's POV for a few chapters, and. . . well, just fasten your seatbelts, kiddies.~**

Music is another thing that has changed drastically since you were last here.

You step into the music shop – full of little disks inside covers, like the disks at the library that played stories on a screen – and are greeted with not a melody, but a throb, a Wailing Stone gone berserk. It vibrates in the limited space until the floor itself is difficult to stand on and the walls seem to slide closer together.

Dr. Drakken has his hands up over the flaps of his ears, and you are relieved to see this. Perhaps it means that, even on a relatively crude planet of the Crystal System, this type of ruckus is not usual. "This is what we call 'hard rock!'" he shouts.

Even then, you have to crane toward him to make out his voice, a problem you have never had before. You frown. "You mean…like a Diamond?" you ask.

The resonance of Drakken's laughter is indistinguishable from the thrum; only the shake of his shoulders alerts you to its presence. "Oopsie! My fault!" he says. "In this case 'rock' doesn't mean 'stone.'" You much prefer that word, _stone_ – it sounds so much more elegant. "It's referring to a type of music – the one you're currently hearing – called 'rock and roll.'"

"Oh." You understand the _roll_ , can hear it, like the echo of waves in a dense cavern. And _rock_ is even more vivid in your mind, a human ship batted about in a storm.

"I think they call it that because it makes you want to _rock_ your body." This doesn't look as dangerous as it sounds, not when Drakken lists his own body side to side as a demonstration. "If you like it, that is. Me, I'm not a huge fan of hard rock – that's what shakes the floors – my cousin likes it, though. Soft rock's just got a good strong beat. That's more my style." He grins for no apparent reason other than to end his sentence.

You still have yet to ask what a _cousin_ is. You simply nod, forming a basic outline in your mind.

Drakken squeals suddenly and picks up what appears to be a communication headset, only puffy and purple – an indulgence Homeworld would _never_ have permitted. He stretches the space between the cupping speakers until it is wide enough to fit a small head. "These are called _headphones_ ," he says. "They clamp onto the sides of your head."

You must flinch at the word _clamp_ , because Drakken begins to emphatically shake his head. "They don't hurt, I promise," he says in his hurried way. "They're just what you wear to hear music – because it drowns all of this –" he gestures as though to the cloud of noise around you – "out. Also, this way no one else can hear it but you.

"Can I put them on you?" he finishes, almost shyly.

You nod again. You haven't heard of the band which excites him so greatly, but you would much prefer Dr. Drakken's music to the jarring thing you are hearing now, the one with an almost physical aggression.

Drakken advances a step, stops, hesitates, retreats. He casts helpless glances between you and the headphones in his hand. "Ummm…I don't really know how to say this politely. Never had to tell anyone this before – but – um – errr – you don't have any ears."

You are not offended. It is true, after all. Since most of the parts required for hearing are internal, the Gems have not bothered to shapeshift those lumpy, shell-like holes simply to flop at the bottoms and collect wax, as humans' do. Drakken's are especially large and cumbersome-looking, wiggling when his movements are too sudden – comical, though. You enjoy them.

"No," you say. "I don't." You lift your own shoulders; it appears to be some sort of apology to the citizens of Earth.

"But you can still hear, right?" Drakken jams his fingers into his eyebrow before you can respond. "Well, du-uh, of course you can! I've been talking to you for a week or something…" He toys with the headphones, winding his thumb in the cord connecting them to a flat-topped desk with a screen embedded. "Where should I put it, then? Where do you hear from?"

"Anywhere, really." The violent song has ended, and there is enough room to hear yourself again.

Drakken blinks. "O-oh. Okay." He tweaks the headphones' cords, once, twice, three times. "Can I just put them on over your head? Would that work? Because that's the way it's typically done…"

"Yes. That'd work."

You take an optional breath and hold it in when Dr. Drakken fits the headphones around your head, in the spot right where your hair ends. His lack of coordination sometimes makes the gentleness difficult for him. But his small fingers were designed for delicate tasks such as this, and he fits the headphones snugly with only a few pokes.

And then it is as if you disappear into a vacuum. You realize, strangely, how utterly silent a Gem without organs is when cut off. Dr. Drakken's blood is always roaring along its path in his veins, his stomach warbling with hunger, his joints making assorted odd noises.

You are relieved when his voice filters in, strained down to almost nothing yet with its excitement intact. "Okay, now I'm going to tap this screen," he says, "and it'll play a little of The Elements' music. Let me know what you think!"

"I will," you say, and it rings stark in the quiet.

"All righty then!" Drakken pokes at the screen – with some modern Earth technology, even the buttons are printed directly on the screen, no longer solid objects – and the faint stirrings of music creep through the padding into the walls of your head, growing louder and intensifying over time.

There are instruments you recognize in the background – the keyboard one, a sophisticated upgrade of the one you played in the toy store. The one with the lovely strings that you stroke with a bow. The sound raises tiny sections of your skin, chilled with bumps that lift your fine hairs.

Louder than those, however, is another instrument you are not familiar with. You can identify the sound of strings, but these are being strummed much faster so that all the notes bleed into one another – not unpleasantly, but oddly. It has an easier, stronger sound.

"What's that instrument?" you call to Drakken. "The main one – I haven't heard it before."

Drakken's face fills with light again. "A guitar!" he says. "There are a lot of different kinds. The Elements used them a lot because they have – well, scientifically speaking, the vibrations of the strings – aww, you know what? They just sound cool!"

He almost shouts, the air ruffling your bob on its way over your head and back through the room. You giggle, at the exaggerated volume and at how far his mouth manages to spread.

Over the instruments, in snatches, you pick out words. There is a gentleness to them that you did not expect; they speak of new awkward love and finding acceptance and the need to take care of one another.

"Do you like it?" Drakken asks.

You consider the question for a moment, and then you nod. You do not share the enthusiasm that flows from him for this music, but you can appreciate it: its beat, its message, its importance to your friend.

When Drakken lifts the headphones, your hearing is assaulted by a thumping, thick and metallic, as if someone is repeatedly striking the hull of one of Homeworld's sleek new battleships. You can feel it vibrating through the hollows of your body. You flinch, not just from the racket, but from the thoughts of war it carries with it.

Dr. Drakken places his hands over his ears again – though his hands are so small, his ears so large that sections of them are left unprotected. He tilts his head toward the door and then skitters for it. You follow, eager to be free of the pounding.

Once outside, Drakken wiggles as though to shake off any lingering bits of the sound. "Now, see, my cousin is into hard rock, with all the drums and such things."

 _Cousin_. You slide the word back and forth in your brain a few times. There is still so much you have yet to learn.

Drakken flashes a grin as wide and as laden with possibilities as the galaxies above. "But it's a little too hard on my nervous system." You know this is the collection of cells that allows human beings to feel pain and other sensations, more mysterious to you, called by such names as _tickles_ and _itches_. And you can understand how it could be rattled by such an enormous noise. "Like I said earlier, I prefer soft rock."

And you smile somewhere inside, because – if one has to use such an unsophisticated term – Lapis Lazuli is a soft "rock."

The group performing at the beach that night does not turn out to be the Elements, to Drakken's momentary disappointment. They are a small gathering, only five of them. One strums an instrument whose voice you recognize as a guitar, not as big as you would have imagined it and rather reminiscent of an upside-down Earth flower, with a long thin stalk blossoming into a bulb shape where strings lace across a shallow hole. Another stoops over a keyboard, one sings into what resembles the Diamonds' Voice-Enhancers, and two more play wind instruments, black straight rods with hooks at the end where lips can rest and a collection of tiny holes that they constantly cover and uncover to produce different keys.

They look like strange, sloppy humans, the lot of them – jeans torn at the knees, the sleeves of their shirts missing entirely, their hair jutting at odd angles – but together, they produce something beautiful.

The sound cascades over you and you raise your chin to catch it. It rings with sincerity and understanding and the harmony that once governed your people.

It is so good – and you are surprised to feel tiny dots of water in your eyes – it is so good to hear music again.

The ridged underside of Dr. Drakken's sandal leaves indents in the sand as he taps it in time to the song. You feel your limbs relaxing, feel your own body swaying side to side, and you glance upward toward your home.

Darkness is slipping in, the sun pivoting to warm the other side of the planet now. The last of its light erupts across the sky, staining it pink, with orange streaks the color of a Ruby's flames and muted lavender clouds that are surely no thicker than your own wings. The moon hangs low near the horizon, like a probe sent to keep watch.

You run sand between your fingers and you sigh – happily. Have this many wonders always existed on Earth?

How did you miss them the first time?

The liveliness of the first song dies down, into an unhurried tune whose notes are longer, farther apart, and pitched softer. It is made to slow down and savor, like the taste of ice cream.

Drakken suddenly appears to have something stuck to the roof of his mouth. He turns toward you, his fingers fidgeting at nothing – and then they straighten and extend to you. Eyes shy, he asks, "Do you want to dance?"

You blink. A darker shade of blue immediately rushes for your cheeks. Dragged along with it are the things you've observed over thousands of years – the respectful bow to one another, the entwining of hands, the careful choreography designed to make room for another's consciousness, the anticipation in tense legs, the moment of connection where you see nothing but light, and the resulting creature. Sometimes a flawless multiplication of strength and speed and cunning; other times…a monster.

And yet, at the center of it all, the closeness, the connection. What leads Gems into forbidden situations to seek it.

"Already?" you whisper. You duck your head forward, and yet you cannot help but peek at Dr. Drakken's face.

It is bewildered, almost contorted. His eyebrow has furrowed, pushing peaks into the skin above it. Below, his pupils drift in to meet each other, but they haven't lost their kindness in their confusion. "What did I do?" he asks, and he sounds even younger than forty-two.

He truly has no idea.

Of course. Of course he doesn't know. Humans can't fuse. You were repeatedly told that was one of the reasons they were inferior, that they were unfit to live…

The gem on your back suddenly feels cold and callous. You shiver, narrowing your focus on fusion instead: its naturalness to you, what an alien concept it is to Dr. Drakken. How can you make him understand what it is like to burst into a larger, stronger, more efficient version of yourself?

And how will you possibly explain what the rebel Gems who fuse outside of class experience – to occupy the same body as another Gem – and a third, wholly separate being who is both of you and neither of you at once?

You shut your eyes to be alone with the scattered images. "My people," you begin, "do something called _fusion_."

All is dark behind your eyelids, but you hear Dr. Drakken let out his deepened squeal, his "Ooh!" noise. "Which kind?" he asks excitedly. "Atomic? Molecular? Hydro-electric?"

The words fall, senseless, into your mind and roll away. "Gem fusion?" you venture, opening a slit of one eye to gauge his reaction.

"Oh." Drakken shrugs. "Never heard of it." It would seem a dismissal were his tone not so open and curious, as if he has a great desire to hear more.

You close the slit again. Now you _must_ define it, for his sake, and you are no more certain you can than a dolphin can explain swimming to land creatures.

But Dr. Drakken has guided you through the mysteries of his planet; now you have a chance to repay that. A Diamond could defer the question to a Pearl, who would have a seamless answer already prepared.

Seamless and impersonal – Drakken deserves something warmer.

"Fusion is a process where Gems combine their strength and skills," you say. Though you cannot see Drakken's face, you can imagine him siphoning energy from your words, much as he does with his human food. "They merge into one bigger Gem, and she's called a fusion, too."

The silence remains wide and clean, so you decide to keep going. "We do a special dance before we fuse to get our bodies synchronized. And we fill our minds with thoughts of cooperation, because if we can't do that, the fusion won't stick. Fusing is the ultimate demonstration of trust. It's not to be used lightly."

You pause for the faded old reflection of the first cross-Gem fusion you ever saw, the permanent one who has come to take care of Steven now. The one whom Blue Diamond and her court later declared an "abomination."

She was taller than you, this combination of two tiny Gems, with skin of a purplish cast and clothes swirled with pink and blue like the sunset. She had three eyes – imagine! Three! – and they were as fresh and new and filled with wonder as a Kindergartener just emerged. Everything about her was gawky, striking, unnatural, and probably wrong. But _abomination_?

You didn't see it.

"It's only supposed to be used for battle tactics," you continue, "but…it's hard not to come out of it feeling closer to the other Gem." The admission flees your lips like treason. Your loyalty compels you to add, hastily, "The rebel Gems misuse this. They'll fuse all the time, just for fun."

Another, more recent, flash of the permanent fusion, reaching out to take you from Steven. She is now a Gem of grace and quiet strength who bears little resemblance to the gangly, frightened, carelessly combined creature who stood before Blue Diamond. Beneath your fear of her, you should have been overwhelmed by repulsion.

Instead, you were envious – envious that they could be that close when a thick sheaf of glass separated you from your nearest fellow Gem.

You allow your eyes to open and study Dr. Drakken, silhouetted against the fading brilliance of the sky. As you expected, he is bright-eyed and energetic with the newly absorbed information. He rubs the back of his neck with one hand.

"Well," he says, the buoys in his voice lifting on the wave of a nervous giggle, "I've never been accused of getting too fresh before."

You catch enough of his meaning for your cheeks to darken further. Drakken, too, breaks out in two pink patches, one on either side of his oddly curly nose. You stand there, the two of you, embarrassed and grinning together.

"Ahem!" Drakken coughs the way he does when the sea breezes carry sand into his mouth. "How's about this? We can dance _for_ each other, but not _with_ each other. Like, I'll just dance by myself and you'll just dance for yourself. No fusing. No drama. Just dancing." His hands pluck at the air. "Okay?"

He sounds as uncertain as the currents running through you, which soothes them somehow. And you would be lying if you claimed you aren't intrigued by the thought of watching him dance for you.

"Okay," you say.

Dr. Drakken's smile is illuminated from within, a safe, guiding lighthouse. "All righty then," he says, fingers wiggling. "Check _this_ out."

He begins sliding backward, left foot rolling behind the right, right foot immediately picking up the pattern. There's a sort of oozing motion to them, supple and constant and limp, and somehow he also manages to bob his head back and forth in time to the keyboard. It is the first bit of grace you have seen in Dr. Drakken, and it is thoroughly amazing.

You clap for him; you clap for joy; you clap to maintain the beat you can feel coursing gently through the dune grass under you.

As soon as Drakken's feet stop moving, they bend over each other and he topples to the ground with a great shower of sand.

You lean over him and offer your hand in assistance. "What do you call that?" you ask.

Drakken accepts your hand gingerly, as if he is afraid he will pull you down rather than pull himself up. "Falling down," he says with a sheepish grin.

You giggle. "No, I mean the dance."

"Oh." Drakken merrily kicks off his sandals and plunges his toes into the specks of fine silt and fragmented seashells. "That's the Moonwalk. It's the only dance I've ever really mastered."

That's not at all what it looks like to walk on the moon, even for creatures who cannot reflexively adjust to any standard of gravity. But you don't say this; you only watch Dr. Drakken bring his toes back up, dusted with powder along their delicate nails.

"Your turn!" Drakken proclaims. He stands back up, fists wriggling with excitement. "To dance, I mean."

You shift, hesitant.

"You said Gems do a special dance," Drakken says, tilting his spikes of hair at you. "Is that the same dance for everyone?"

"No," you say. "We all do different ones."

"Can you show me yours?" Dr. Drakken is speaking at too much volume and too deep a pitch to qualify as a whisper, and yet you can hear the gentle current in which the buoys in his voice bob.

 _Can you_ – as effortlessly as the rising tide flattened your sandcastle, those words wash away five thousand years of imperatives, the rebel Pearl's as bladed and angular as everything else about her, the fusion's in flat solid layers as unyielding as her gauntlets:

 _Show me the Homeworld Warp._

 _Show us Blue Diamond right now._

 _Show me the Kindergarten – I want to make sure it's shut down._

You could refuse, but that would only result in sharper demands, hurled tightly through the teeth – the rebel Pearl could be unpredictable, and you did not know what would happen to you if she threw the mirror to the floor and shattered it. When you failed to show her the Galaxy Warp that last morning, it was not an act of defiance. Blocked on all sides from the energy of the universe, you simply could not afford to spend any of your fading strength on something a Pearl could just as easily project from her own gem.

And then you met Steven.

Kindness will not sustain a Gem in such a cracked, drained state. Yet when Steven spoke to you, addressing you as one Gem to another, he returned to you your will.

That is what Dr. Drakken has extended to you now.

It makes your decision obvious.

"Yes," you say. "I'll show you."

Drakken applauds at a frenetic pace, much faster than yours a few minutes ago, and with each clap comes a bounce backward up the beach, until he is standing at a respectful distance.

You close your eyes for a moment and gather your thoughts, your feelings. It has been so long, so very long, and your legs are unsteady, curved inward without someone with whom to synchronize. You hear the seabirds and you hear the waves, and you imagine Dr. Drakken's heartbeat.

With a bow to an unseen partner, you move forward and your dance begins.

You flick across the sand, lightly enough that particles don't even cling to your manifested skin. One leg rises in a soft split above your head, Earth air billowing into your skirt, and for a moment you think perhaps you have misjudged the rebel Gems: perhaps it is not the fusion they crave so much as the opportunity to dance.

It is freeing.

You bring your leg down, replace it with a hand aimed at the sky, grasping for accommodating fingers to complete them. None come – of course not – and your fingers curl around emptiness. Your body twirls in a circle; your back dips for the ground in an arc that suspends you with the inkling of support, less distant now than it has been since your last conversation with Steven.

As you straighten again you catch a glimpse, around the leg you have already uncoiled for another split, of Dr. Drakken's face. His mouth hangs ajar, the corners of it unsteadily tweaking upward. His eyes have rounded, and the darkness of them shines like a summoning gem. You recognize his awe.

You wonder what it is he's seeing.

When you finish, dipping backward and then floating back upright, your hair slaps your cheeks and life floods between your shoulder blades. You are revitalized, you are breathing, and it fills you. Is this how a human being feels after nourishing themselves?

You give one last bow, this one to Drakken, and sink to the sandy floor beneath you, legs tucked comfortably up to your chin.

Drakken still appears to be frozen in time and space, his only movements the patter of his eyelashes, the swelling and lowering of his chest. It is his fingertips that finally twitch, knocking against each other, and he loosens one hand to rub the back of his neck, where the shagginess kicks outward. The buoys you love to hear turn suddenly shy as he says, "You – um – wow – that was – I mean – you. . . you have a very beautiful dance."

You do?

"Thank you," you say. "I liked your moonwalk, too."

It suited him as if it were designed for him.

"Oh. Thanks." The corners of Dr. Drakken's mouth nudge upward, while the corners of his eyes angle down. "It might be best that we didn't dance with each other. I'm a little out of practice. Last girl I danced with was a robot."

"A robot?" you repeat.

"Yes," Drakken says. "Do you – do you have robots on Homeworld?"

You nod. You know very well of robots – mechanical, technology-loaded, capable of speech but apparently not of sufficient thought processes; disposable, even lower than Pearls. Certainly not capable of anything so elegant as dance. "Why did you dance with one, though?"

Drakken chuckles with a strange, conflicting quality of fondness and bitterness. "Because I didn't have a girlfriend."

"Girlfriend." You measure the word. "Does that have anything to do with the human concept of marriage?"

Drakken crows "Yes!" and throws his arm skyward, as if he is immensely proud of you. "A girlfriend is sort of like Phase One," he explains. His hands work the air, seeming to wad up what he wants to say and then lay it flat for you. "If you're lucky, under the right temperature and pressure, if you let it cook for a long time, it can turn into marriage."

You nod again to show he has explained himself very well. There is still one thing you do not understand, though. "Why didn't you have a girlfriend?"

Drakken blinks at you, several times, and then lets out a laugh, a surprised sort of spurt, like a stream of water blown by a dolphin. "Why didn't I – ? I mean, because I was scrawny and death-pale and a science geek and I wore these huge glasses –" He must see your frown, your attempt to envision how Desert Glass could be woven into the fabric humans wear, because he places his fingers in rings around his eyes, in bigger versions of the black circles that cup them. "Glasses are these big round lenses people wear to help them see better. I bet Gems all have perfect vision, though, huh?"

"Yes. But I've seen those before. I just didn't know what they were called." Steven's little friend – his girlfriend? – the one named Connie, wears them. They are charming on her, and all you can do is stare at Dr. Drakken's lips, which are molding a new crest of words, nice sensible words, and yet they don't seem relevant to your question at all:

"What does any of that have to do with having a girlfriend?"

Drakken's grin broadens. "You know, I really like you."

It is your turn to blink. "I like you, too," you say.

Drakken sighs, in perfect contentment it seems, and lowers himself to the ground. His short legs reach the sand while the long rest of him is still unfolding and refolding itself into a sit.

A quick glance at the sky, and your attention is captured by the star-patterns that have twisted, shrunk, and expanded since the days of your imprisonment. Humans will have made different patterns than the ones your people developed long before the war, and they will have invented different stories as to what they are and how they got there. So many stories yet to be told. Your head, heavy but not an in unpleasant way, tips slightly to the side and rests on the synthetic padding of Dr. Drakken's shoulder.

He grins, larger still, and flutters his left hand – only his left so as not to jostle you, you somehow instinctively guess.

As a sea breeze swoops in and ruffles your hair, kisses at your cheekbones, Drakken begins to tap his fingerprints together. "Well – I'm – I have to go back to Middleton tomorrow."

He pitches his voice low and gentle, as if he fears the news will shatter you. And while your appreciation for this and your memory that this was coming _do_ absorb some of the sting, it still pierces in some distant fashion. "Why?" you say, even though you know it is a ridiculous question.

It apparently is such a ridiculous question that Drakken has not prepared an answer. "Well, because it's where my mother lives," he says after a silence heavy as Quartz. "It's where I was born. It's where I was raised. It's my home."

Regret leaps into his eyes almost before you even feel the pinch of it, quick and narrow down your back. "Oh! I'm sorry!" Drakken gasps. "I meant to say that more sensitively! Something like, 'You showed me how important it is not to take home for granted.'"

When you look at him, his face is as kind as ever, his eyebrow rumpled in worry over any distress he may have caused you. You cannot smile it away, but you can nod to acknowledge that you aren't choosing to take offense.

Drakken swallows – why, you aren't certain; he hasn't been chewing anything. His buoy-words tangle in their own strings as he says, "You would be welcome there. If you wanted to come."

It takes a moment for you to grasp the full meaning of his offer.

Everything. He extends to you everything.

Any place that could raise a man like Dr. Drakken, a man who has done lifelong battle with his hate and his pain and has emerged with clumsy compassion and the best of human decency – any such place must be lovely. But it is _his_ world; these are _his_ people.

And everyone else will have ears.

The Gems were once a proud, honorable species. Surely their nobility could not have vanished entirely in a meager five thousand years. Maybe it only lies hidden, a sea anemone retracting into itself, waiting for high tide to moisten it again.

Shaking your head is more tasking than such a simple move should be. "No," you say. "It's very nice, but I have a home, too. I have to try and help it." You gaze up at the vast distance, at the gulf you could not breach with even your ocean, and something tightens in you as though you are too small to hold it. "There's got to be something I can do to remind the Gems of how it used to be."

Drakken's chin falls down the length of his chest. "You're so _loyal_ to them," he says, the buoys choppy and carrying over the softening beat of the music. "If they can't appreciate that, then they forgot to shapeshift brains!"

"That's not how intelligence works for Gems, Drakken," you tell him.

Drakken grunts. "I know, but it was such a good line!"

The stars play in his eyes, as if he is the mirror reflecting galaxies, demonstrating to everyone what a vast and wonderful place space is, its shine mixing with his natural, organic sparkle. That sparkle reminds you so much of Steven's, and yet it is older, deeper – old and deep enough to comprehend the hardest crevices and prisons you have found yourself wedged into. Dr. Drakken has been through so much in his fleeting lifetime, and it has only made him brighter in the darkness.

With any luck, you will carry some of that back home with you.

It is a thought that invigorates you, lifts you easily to your feet, and points you toward the sea. "Come on," you say. "I need to feel the ocean before I go."

"I'll feel it, too!" Drakken says. The skin on his forehead ridges. "Well, provided it's warm enough. Some days, it's just ice-cold, you know…"

And on and on he goes. It is happy chatter, not an incessant droning of missions and violations. You will miss it.

There is still so much to ask him – what dancing signifies to humans, why his throat has a knob pressing at its center where Gems' are flat, how exactly humans care for each other when one is damaged.

For now, however, you are more strongly pulled to the ocean than you are toward your curiosity. You rush into it, the hem of your skirt kissing the water until foam sparkles on it.

Dr. Drakken leaves the sandals behind as he follows you – the undersides of his feet are imprinted with tender folds in the flesh; you're unsure what they are, but you find them appealing. His largest toe dips tentatively into the water and then withdraws immediately with a bellow. "Oooh! It _is_ too cold."

A contortion chases away his smile, and you don't want it to leave. You innately know what you must do.

As naturally as humans breathe, you bend over and submerge the tips of your fingers. You flood yourself with warm thoughts – reflections of early human fires crackling, of your galaxy's sun rolling over Homeworld, of the Crystal System's sun rolling over Drakken's planet. Though the temperature your body has adopted never changes, you can feel the power of heat seeping from the core of your gem to zing down your arms and travel out through the patterns on your fingertips.

Drakken's face eases, and he sighs out a long, bobbing, "Ahhhh. Much better, thank you." He suddenly squints in your direction. "Wait – did _you_ do that?"

"Yes," you say – modestly. The victory you felt when your ocean bested the small purple Gem and injured the human named Greg could have been a seabird, cawing in your head; this is settled and restful.

No sooner have you thought that than Dr. Drakken screams.

It is the shrillest sound you have ever heard him make, and it drives at you like a well-thrust weapon. "My legs!" he cries. "A giant squid just grabbed my ankle! Both my ankles! I'm going down!"

He's wrong. A giant squid would never enter water this shallow.

You squat and examine his feet anyway. They _are_ ensnared, by a thick, oily strand of browned-green seaweed that loops them together and slithers upward to reach for his knobbed ankles. You imagine how that must feel, zigzagged between his legs like a restraint, and you understand where the fear comes from.

With small, delicate movements of your hands, you lean toward his leg – surprisingly short beneath his lengthy torso. You untangle the seaweed and lift it up to show Drakken there's no need to be afraid. "See? It's just kelp," you say.

"Oh. Right."

And because he appears embarrassed, you decide to give him, "You're really smart to know what giant squid are, though. Last time I was here, humans thought they were mystical sea monsters."

Drakken's laugh is thin, almost a sniffle. "I bet you're very well acquainted with giant squid, aren't you?"

You shake your head. "I've seen a few, but I don't like going to the bottom of the ocean. It's so dark and cold and competitive." Drakken's eyebrow puckers, so you explain – "There's not much food, so everyone fights over whatever falls down there."

And you have never liked fighting.

"Now, where I _do_ like to go," you say, determined not to let the pleasantness of this evening be washed away, "is the Kelp Forest." You skim between your fingers the strand you're still holding. "Huge stalks of these just sprout from the ocean bed, and they can grow _fast_. It gives so many animals food and shelter."

Dr. Drakken is watching you, his eyes as round and shiny as a Pearl's gem.

"It's so peaceful down there," you continue. "When the sun hits the water just right, it shines right through the leaves and makes everything so beautiful. It's not too hot. Not too cold, either. There are little animals –" you struggle to find the word for the playful brown creatures – "otters, is that it?"

"Sea otters, yes," Drakken says.

"They'll wrap up in kelp before they go to sleep so they won't drift away. It's where they feel safe – it has plenty of places to hide," you say. "Nothing ever followed me down there. I liked to just go and sit by the kelp and close my eyes."

You close them now and picture your hideaway – the sun's rays filtering through the kelp leaves, casting everything in a soak of greenish gold; the shimmery ribbon of an eel threading its way through the plants; the carefree cries of the otters at play. How many times you took refuge down there when skirmishes broke out, when the Diamonds gave increasingly foreboding orders.

The Gems had never yet in your lifetime converted a planet this covered by water before. Never had you seen such prolific sea life, and part of you couldn't help hoping that they, at least, might survive the conversion process. The Kindergartens were concentrated on dry land, ignoring the potential under the ocean's crust. You were planning to bring this up – if and only if the land mantle didn't yield a sufficient harvest.

"Sounds like my science lab." Dr. Drakken's deep voice intrudes on your imagination, but you don't mind; he is good company. "Only without the sea otters." He grunts. "If I see one of those, I _know_ it's time to go to sleep."

It's your turn to squint at him. This is a human custom you know nothing about. "Is that how all humans know when to go to bed? An otter comes and tells them?"

A chuckle bursts from Drakken like the roar of a launching rocket. He doubles over as if in pain, clutching his side with one hand and pounding on his knee with the other. "Sea otters. . . tell people it's time to go to bed!" he gasps.

There's a hint of derision in it – affectionate derision, but it still rubs abrasively between your shoulder blades, and you'd like it to stop. When it doesn't, when it keeps making you feel small and alien, you call, "Stop it!" and your hands, all on their own, scoop a clump of moist sand and throw it his way.

It collides with Drakken's leg, right below where his bathing garment ends.

Drakken freezes in place. So, it seems, does time itself. Your hands go to your mouth, and it is no longer Dr. Drakken you are seeing – it is Steven's father, his leg twisted at a crumpled angle to match the wreckage of his vehicle.

"Oh stars," you say into your fingers. "Did I hurt you?"

Drakken's eyes bulge a little beyond their boundaries as he says, "Huh?"; fall back into place when he says, "No;" and then gleam with mischief as he adds, "It doesn't hurt as long as you don't aim at the FACE!" and volleys his own sand handful at you.

It hits your elbow, breaks apart, and dribbles back down to the water. And Drakken is right – it doesn't hurt. You say, "Hey!" anyway, just because it's fun. You giggle and return his throw with another of your own.

Drakken takes aim back at you, the sand slapping in the exact spot between the end of your top and the beginning of your skirt. Blue Diamond's voice in your head, snapping at you about how inelegant you appear, how unlike a member of her court, dims along with the sky as the sun disappears from sight.

The sand game continues – you have never liked fighting, so this is only a game – until a wave of laughter finally overtakes Dr. Drakken and sends him to his back in the shallowest part of the water, howling and whooping.

You wade over to him and lie down beside him. Water washes into all the gaps your body forms stretched out like this.

A woman passing by gives you a look of what you think may be envy, her gaze fixed on how the water surges over your clothes without so much as dampening them. You have seen how the human women's light dresses drag when wet as though weighted down with anchors. There was a time when that would have kindled a hint of smugness in you.

Instead, you turn to your friend.

"I have a question now," you say. "And I think if anyone can answer it, it's you."

"Well, then –" Drakken's chest pokes out – "by all means, then, ask."

"What does it mean when someone's leg is _broken_?" The word is not easy for you to say, for any Gem to say. It signifies the end of everything. And while the human named Greg crawled out and was clearly not dead, it still sounds extremely serious.

"Oh, well," Dr. Drakken says, his eyes wide, shiny in their knowledge. "That means the bone inside breaks."

Bones, you remember, form the basic cut of human framework, enabling them to do such rudimentary things as stand up and walk. You survey Drakken's own, dimly visible against the outline of his thin legs. "It…shatters?" This word also stalls and stutters in your throat.

"No, no, not usually," Drakken says, filtering through the sand until he finds a twig. "It just – snaps apart." He splits the twig jaggedly in two.

Greg reflects back across your mind, his face a mold of pain. You put it there. "Does it hurt?" you say.

"Ohhhhhhh, _yes_ ," Drakken says. " _Especially_ a leg."

"Oh," you say quietly.

Your powers roil inside you. Both hands retreat to the back of your neck as you say, "Does it stay broken…forever?"

Drakken begins to shake his head so fervently that the branched ends of his hair loosen from their cloth tie and smack off his skin. "No, they can fix it. Quite easily in fact." He tosses the fragments of twig aside, freeing his hands for the explanation. "First off, you go to a doctor and they kind of push the pieces of the bone back together so that they're touching again. Then they put plaster – that's this stuff that's really squishy when it's wet and then hardens as it dries – they shape that around the outside of the leg – and then when it hardens, it makes a _cast_ to hold the bones in place. They leave the cast on for a few months, and the bones grow back together." His excited words taper off to some tender place as he tells you, "The human body has a remarkable capacity to heal."

 _Months_ are based on the phases of the moon. It's been several since you tossed Greg's vehicle through the air. His leg must work again. "Yes. That's good," you say.

There are still a thousand questions in Dr. Drakken's eyes. You will answer them, tomorrow, when you exchange your good-byes.

For now, though, there is the filling echo of the string instruments and the sparse push-pull of the tide slapping the shore and then flowing away. Like Sapphire and her Ruby protector, the sounds are vastly different, and yet what they form is not altogether unpleasant. You wish to hold it, keep it, the way you were once held and kept.

"How _do_ humans know when they need to sleep?" you ask instead. "And what do sea otters have to do with it?"

Drakken chuckles, this time with a warmth that overshadows whatever else he may have. "Well, sometimes when you're super, super tired, you start seeing things that aren't there. Things that make no sense…like a sea otter in a landlocked laboratory." He winds a finger through the air, as though to wrap it all together. "That's a sign that you need to shut down for the night."

"Really?" You roll over onto your side, water whispering against your right cheek. "What else?"

"Well, as you may have deduced, your mind gets awfully fuzzy. Hard to think straight. Your head feels like it's stuffed full of cement so you can barely keep it upright, and your eyelids get really, really heavy, too. You have to keep shutting them. And you keep yawning" – that, you've learned, is what it's called when humans' lips draw back and a raspy noise comes from them – "and your limbs just drag whenever you try to move them. It's called fatigue."

"Sounds awful," you say. His description holds your attention rapt. You have been weary before, with battle sounds ringing in your head and your reserve stretched thinner than the screens that now shield your people's faces, but never have you experienced this 'fatigue.' Even when you were inside the mirror, cut off from your source of energy, you felt no dragging or yawning; you just felt the compression of yourself, diminishing and flickering.

"Oh, it's really not all _that_ bad," Dr. Drakken says, though the edges of his smile flare into a grimace. "Granted, it's a real pain when you've got a really important project to work on, and then boom! You suddenly need to go to bed. I kind of envy you, really – who knows how much more we could get done if we didn't have to devote eight hours a night to lying unconscious?"

You spread your toes to allow a hermit crab to continue, uninterrupted, on its path. "Why do you? If we don't?"

Drakken gives you a quizzical look. His fingertips meet and then spring apart. "Well – do you know about plug-ins versus batteries?"

"Yes." Power grids, each sprouting innumerable thick cords, litter Homeworld's surface now, and ever-smaller, ever-sleeker power cells are manufactured every day to fuel the technology that needs to be taken along with you.

"Well, you Gems have your Cosmic Energy Supply."

That's not how you would have worded it, but you like how mighty it makes you and your people sound.

"But us humans, we run on batteries, and we need to recharge every now and then." Drakken hikes himself up onto one elbow and grins at you. "That's why we've got to eat – and sleep."

"Oh. That makes sense."

You study Dr. Drakken's face in the last faint sunbeams. It is gleeful as he unearths a sand dollar from the tangle of seaweed and shells; it is content as he lays it back down again to rest beside his new find; it is indignant when the next wave to wash ashore sneaks right into the little holes in his nose.

With a flick of your hands, you banish that wave and return your attention to your sputtering friend. He snorts and coughs, wiping at his nose with his wet sleeves. "I could take you down to the Kelp Forest," you offer, eager to return the peace to his expression. "It's so beautiful down there."

To your surprise, Dr. Drakken's head shakes again, and his next cough is awkward. "Well, errr, no. I mean, thank you, but we humans – we can't breathe underwater."

"Right," you say, embarrassment's press on your chest. As soon as he says it, you remember. Of course. That's why they can _drown_.

 _Lapis, I'm coming up to talk to you. So please don't drown me._

A thousand different sensations rush down your back.

"So you can't go underwater at _all_?" you say. Your pity for this species doubles.

"Well, we _can_ ," Drakken says. "But not without scuba gear or something."

You must frown, because he sits up jauntily and grabs his knees as he rocks forward. "SCUBA. It's an acronym, actually. Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. It's a tank of oxygen that straps to a person's back. You breathe through a tube that connects it to your nose and mouth."

He taps each body part as he mentions it. It makes the unknown device easier to picture.

"Thank you. I like it when you explain things," you say, perhaps more timidly than intended.

"You _do_?" Drakken says. He is breakable; he cannot fuse; but that smile seems too wide and brilliant to belong to a simple human. "Nobody else does! They're just all like, 'Shut up, Drakken.' But I just _love_ to explain things!" His mouth smacks, a sound like rustling paper. "Dries out my throat, though. I need to get some water."

"Water?" You lift your eyebrows at him.

"To drink," Drakken says. "I'm thirsty."

"Oh." You understand; this week you have seen humans take swallows from plastic bottles of water and cups made of a flimsy new material called _Styrofoam_. "Well, go ahead and take a drink. I'm sure the ocean won't mind." If it didn't protest when you stole it and tried to elongate it across the galaxies, it will undoubtedly forgive Drakken a few sips.

"Ooopp," Drakken says. "Sorry, that won't work. Salt water just dehydrates us further. We need _fresh_ water to survive."

"Really?" you say. "I never knew that." You thought you knew everything about water.

Dr. Drakken can read your interest. He bounds to his feet and wrings his bramble-hair dry. "Well, you see, the human body is over seventy percent water" –

He is happy again. You close your eyes and you can hear the ocean in his voice, in the saving touch of Steven's hand against your gem, in both of their heartbeats.

You will take it back home with you, and not just for the sake of your memories. Your people need to understand exactly what lives on this backwater planet – its fragility, its brevity, and its value.


	9. Wreckage

**~No, I'm not entirely finished with the next part, but I had to get this chapter up before the hiatus ends. (One week, w00t!)**

 **We're switching over to Drakken's POV for the next couple of chapters, but we'll eventually come back to Lapis. Promise!~**

Dr. Drakken knows he does not have the swiftest of memories.

It is not uncommon for him to forget occurrences from this past week, this past month, let alone this past summer. Especially _this_ summer – since his reformation, everything has been so wondrous, the flashbacks blur as if they're being played in fast-forward rather than rewind.

So when Drakken's watching TV one day, listening to obscure scraps of news – savoring how many channels the huge screen in his old lair gets before he has to give them up in favor of this new thing called a "budget" – and he hears the reporter say, "The citizens of Beach City are settling back in following last week's evacuation," it takes him a moment to grasp why his ears perk up.

Beach City. That's – that's not the seaside port where he almost drowned; no, this recognition is a happy one, not a frightening one. It doesn't register as any of the resorts where Shego enjoys visiting. And it's certainly not the site of a failed evil scheme.

Is it – could it be where he went on vacation this summer? And met that nice girl? Lapis?

Yes, of course! _Phew_ , that was about to tunnel under his very skin and drive him bat –

 _Wait a minute – evacuation?_

Drakken's body is nothing more than a throbbing collection of pulse points as he rivets his attention to the newscaster. "Mayor Dewey ordered the evacuation," she says, and she's almost grim about it, so different from most smiley reporters, "upon sighting what is presumed to be an extraterrestrial craft, which the townsfolk have dubbed 'the giant space hand.'"

Reporter Lady is replaced by a photo, and her assessment is not wrong. The golden-green hand in the sky is seemingly part of a larger, invisible statue. Very _War-of-the-Worlds_ -esque, it's more elegant than the Lorwardians' battleships, but the hostility is every bit as clear, with its mammoth fingers extended toward the shore like diving boards – or landing gear. More likely the latter, since they were intent on, you know, _landing_ …but near the ocean, so it might make _some_ sense to have a diving board…

Drakken finds it suddenly very difficult to breathe.

"It is confirmed that the craft made a touchdown, but the few witnesses to this event have thus far declined to comment. However, stories are circulating that the craft contained anywhere from two to five life forms. The life forms are rumored to appear humanoid and female."

While Reporter Lady continues to drone on – and Drakken feels his blood vibrating in his ear drums – another photo appears. Someone with a cell phone of the elite variety Drakken can't afford has captured the ship from a different angle. The hard lines of it are visible, intimidating even through two or three layers of tech-screen, and so is a strange insignia blasted on the side:

A white diamond shape cresting high with two others, positioned lower and yet equally imperious, tucked into its sides – a yellow and a blue.

The blue one is familiar to Drakken. No, more than familiar – some part of his brain has been engraved with the pattern. But where – when – how?

Drakken's eyelids skitter shut, and he resorts to tapping on his temple like Winnie-the-Pooh. _Come on, Drakken – think! Use that genius brain of yours and THINK!_

Of course. When he and Lapis exchanged goodbye letters right before his return to Middleton – and she asked, "Is this how you spell your name?" and he had to admit that "Drakken" was a name he made up himself and its spelling was more a matter of invention than _con_ vention – she had carefully signed hers with the design of a blue diamond beside her name.

And yellow and white?

Lapis mentioned someone named Yellow Diamond.

"The craft was airborne again for a time before finally crash-landing near the…"

The words that follow dissipate into a colorless blabber for Drakken. He only sees hunks of alien tech showering down, a wall of fire splitting the beach, a beach where he once stood. It's all he needs, all he can possibly handle. Drakken fumbles for the remote, snaps the TV off, and makes a beeline for his file cabinet before the image of the ship's insignia can dwindle from his mind.

He checks under "B" for "Beach City" and "L" for "Lapis Lazuli" before finally locating the letter under "V" for "Vacation." (So his system can be a little haphazard – so sue him!)

Fingers trembling, Drakken scans the letter and lands on the end. Sure enough, next to Lapis's eyelash of a signature, is a much more thickly inked, respectfully rendered blue diamond.

Identical to the one on the ship.

 _Homeworld. That ship was from Homeworld._

 _Then that means –_

"Lapis!" Drakken blurts out. When no one answers him – he would be even _more_ spooked if they did – he bolts down the stairs for the hovercraft, stopping only to grab the first thing in the pantry, a box of Fruit Roll-Ups that he throws on the seat beside him. He hasn't a second to lose.

* * *

In theory.

In reality, it takes quite awhile to get to Beach City. How long, Drakken couldn't report, since he never bothered to install a digital clock on the hovercraft's otherwise-fully-equipped dashboard. He'd wager an hour and a half, though every minute simultaneously takes two nanoseconds and two million years.

When he finally touches down, add another ten minutes of sheer gawking. Something different permeates the air in the town now – a stirring, a relief not quite yet realized, an adrenaline burst that hasn't worn off yet. Shiny shards of debris litter the streets, smash down roofs, and glitter on the sand like broken bottles. And while it's a pale version of the damage done to Middleton by the Lorwardians – or even his own Diablos – Drakken's stomach seizes anyway.

To make it even more disconcerting, he still recognizes every location. The arcade, the donut shop, the pizza parlor.

It's there, surrounded by the reassuringly mouth-watering odor of oozy cheese and fresh hot bread, that Drakken spies his first human being – a small brown woman with white hair twined up in one of those knob things on her head. He pounces (not literally) on her. "Excuse me," he somehow coaxes himself into saying. "Where are the Gems?"

She doesn't look at him funny. In fact, she redirects to him to "a house on the beach. Built right into the cliff – you can't miss it."

Drakken doesn't. He's never come quite this far down on the beach before, and now the house is unmistakable, lifted from the ground and cupped in the hands of a rock-hewn woman with long, flowing curls and at least four graceful arms. Scientifically speaking, she is a marvel, a mixture of oddities and unimaginable latent possibilities. From an emotional standpoint, she is perplexingly serene and calming and projects a feeling of being watched over.

Both beckon him closer.

The sea, however, is anything but serene. Though the day is near cloudless with only the slightest suggestion of a breeze, the waves roil and churn as though building to the climax of a storm. They lash, almost angrily, against the cliff. Skeptical as any good scientist should be over such mysticism, Drakken nevertheless gets the impression that they are trying to tell him something.

And he can't understand them. Not the way Lapis does.

Drakken can feel the panic threatening inside him, and he churns sand under him in his trek for the elevated porch. His footfalls don't line up with his heartbeat, and it pushes his anxiety even closer to the top. He barely has the lung capacity to hike up the steep porch steps.

Once the door is in sight, though, Drakken regains his energy. He's pounding on the frame with his clenched fist, hollering, "Lapis! Lapis!"

More footsteps approach. He waits for Lapis to open the door, waits to be on the receiving end of her enchanting, little-girl smile and a story of how she escaped the crash.

None of that happens. The door squeaks open, and Drakken is now staring at a very tall, very skinny, very white lady. Her very long, very pointy nose is level with his forehead, and Drakken is afraid to move forward so much as a centimeter and risk being impaled.

"May we…help you?" she asks. Her politeness would sound almost forced were it not so creamy and musical. That helps somewhat – that and the oval gemstone centered between her pale bangs, without any of the tacky glue traces that would be evident in a costume.

 _Okay. She's a Gem._

"Errr, yes, actually." Drakken tries to not appear rude as he slips sideways, out of nose-range. "I'm looking for Lapis. Lapis Lazuli?" he ventures when the white lady's eyebrows squeak toward the gemstone.

"Not here, dude," says a second, husky voice.

It comes from a second woman, with purple skin and a corresponding round stone on her chest, shown off by the shoulder strap sliding down her sternum. Her hair is long enough for her to stand on, though this is perhaps not saying much as she's even shorter than Mother. In the dimness of the other lady's shadow, it looks almost white, but when she steps into the light, flips it at him, and then turns back around, Drakken can see it's truly a light shade of lavender.

For the moment, he is too befuddled to be offended.

White Lady sticks out a long leg and catches the door before it can clap all the way shut. "Amethyst, _really_!" she snaps, bristling with angles.

 _Amethyst. Well, that makes sense._

The white lady takes another lyrical breath, the way Drakken's English professor in college used to do before he launched into an hour-long lecture. But before the first note can emerge, someone else nudges into the doorway.

This one is a little boy, whose chubbiness and curly black hair remind Drakken of a less intellectual version of Kim Possible's computer kid. He tugs on the white lady's… _tunic_ is the closest word Drakken can find. "Pearl, my Elefun's all stuffed up again," he says, skirting the edges of whining without falling in.

White Lady's point softens, much as pencil graphite does when it's been worn down, as she glances about two feet down at the kid.

The child's face records Drakken and then breaks into a mile-wide grin. "Oh, hello, sir," he says – clearly he got his manners from his pointier baby-sitter. "Do you know what's the best way to unclog an elephant's sinuses?"

Drakken strokes his chin and ponders that for a moment. His brain is more than glad to handle this rather than the anxiety produced by the abundance of people and the absence of Lapis. "Well, peppermint is a pretty good natural decongestant," he muses.

The kid's smile grows even bigger, if that's possible. "Yeah! That'll work! I think I still have some candy canes left that Dad gave me for Christmas –"

He is cut off by the white lady – _Pearl_ , did he call her? – and her slight shudder. "I know it's plastic," she says, "but that game still doesn't strike me as being very sanitary."

From closer to the ground, the girl named Amethyst snorts with delight. "No, what would be 'unsanitary' would be if _I_ shapeshifted into the elephant and snorted the butterflies out _my_ nose."

Shapeshifting. Funny how Drakken's dread has reduced his disgust with the practice to a trifle.

The kid's entire body springs forward like it's made of elastic. "Would you do that?" he asks.

"Yeah, you bet!"

Amethyst grabs the child's wrist and tows him behind her through the screened door. The white Pearl chases after them, calling, "Oh no, you don't!"

Leaving Drakken alone on the porch, his skull about to crack from the roar of a thousand demands:

 _What happened to Lapis? Why isn't she here? You need to tell me where I can find her!_

It is drowned out only when a fourth person approaches. This one doesn't so much as step outside, likely because she would have to stoop, if not fold entirely, to fit through the doorway. She has nearly as much hair as Shego, though hers is a puffing-up hair and not a flowing-down hair; it appears to have been packed into a cardboard box and then dumped onto her head to hold its shape around her face – a plum-colored face, sporting dangerously shiny sunglasses and attached to a solid body.

"You coming in?" the…person asks. Flatly. Utterly void of emotion. Not exactly welcoming, but Drakken is desperate.

And so he follows her inside.

The inside of the house is wide-open and breezy-looking, with windows everywhere and the furniture done in neutral. Ordinarily, Drakken might find this boring, but today it serves as a comfort. At least enough of one so that he doesn't feel like he's wandered into a den of lions.

Enough of one that he's able to wonder why three Gems are baby-sitting a boy who, by all accounts, seems to be human – hair and eyes as dark as Drakken's, no stone visible, referencing a father –

Said boy hops up onto the couch and pats the cushion beside him. "Here, have a seat. Make yourself comfy," he says.

Drakken nods in return and aligns his stress-strained back with the back of the couch. It gives gently beneath the knobs of his spine, and his feet, almost of their own volition, stretch out and prop themselves up on a nearby table.

A dagger-gaze drops on Drakken, matching the white lady's pointed words. "Sir, you misunderstand the nature of that table. It was not put there for you to rest your _humanus pedes_."

Drakken is so impressed by her correct usage of scientific nomenclature that he removes his feet immediately.

And squirms in his seat next to the child. He's never been super-good with kids, and while this one isn't pulling his ponytail or threatening to spit up on his lab coat, there is a certain matter-of-fact acceptance about him that Drakken doesn't want to fracture.

"I was wondering if you... any of you. . . could tell me where Lapis Lazuli is." Drakken hears the cracks in his tone; feels the hefty thump of his heart against the walls of his chest. "She's a friend of mine."

Tiny stars seem to form in each of the boy's eyes. "Oh, that's so nice that Lapis has another friend!" he cries. "She always seemed really lonely!"

The sweetness unlocks Drakken's memory as effectively as a pass-code. For only the second time since he arrived here, something makes sense. "You must be Steven," he says. "She talks about you all the time."

Steven ducks his head, one pudgy hand pressed to his cheek in an "aw shucks" manner.

He does recover quickly to gesture toward his three caretakers and say, "Yeah, and these are the Crystal Gems. Garnet" –

The plum-colored one adjusts her shades briefly and says, "Howdy."

" – Amethyst –"

Two purple fingers flash the peace sign as Amethyst says, "Yo."

" – and Pearl!"

"How do you do?" The white lady gives Drakken a smile that appears both happy to be there and anxious to leave.

Drakken nods, although it's not a yes-or-no question, and it might even be rhetorical. His insides are knotted too severely to let him do anything else for a long minute.

Then he manages to say, "And I'm Dr. Drakken. Lifelong citizen of Earth." Drakken waits for the standard round of how-come-you're-blue-then questions. They don't come – maybe not surprisingly from this group. "And I just need to know – where is Lapis?"

Everyone is suddenly looking at everyone else, with frowns and furrows and sad fidgets. Unless facial expressions function very differently for Gems than they do for human beings, they're plainly communicating, _Who wants to be the one to tell him?_

Drakken's heart now stops beating altogether.

"No," he breathes once his body has jump-started it. "Oh, no, no, no, please, no…"

Pearl squats down on her knees beside the couch and glances at Drakken as if she's uncertain whether to touch him or not. "She's alive, Dr….?"

"Drakken," Steven supplies before Drakken can – which is probably for the best, because Drakken feels as though his tongue may be frozen for another decade or two.

But it isn't. It works and it sputters, "Then – _what_? I saw the giant space hand crash into the beach – I need to know – where _is_ she, please?"

Pearl and Amethyst flinch, out of sync with one another. Garnet remains as rigid as a board.

"Lapis _was_ aboard the…the 'giant space hand,'" Pearl says after some hesitation. Drakken would want to stroke the melody of her voice were it not saying these particular words, words even it seems uncomfortable saying. "It was being piloted by two hostile Homeworld gems – Jasper and Peridot. Lapis was their prisoner."

Drakken's throat grows thick with dread. "Prisoner? How? Did they – they didn't put her back in the mirror, did they?"

Pearl's eyebrows pitch toward the top of her gem. "My, she _did_ tell you a few things…"

It'd seem like a compliment under other circumstances.

Not now, not when the Gem called Amethyst lets out another snort. "Nah, not in the mirror. They said she was their 'informant'" – she twitches her fingers into sarcastic quotation marks, Shego-style – "but, I mean, come _on_! They were just as quick to slap her in space jail as the rest of us."

"Space…jail?" Drakken repeats.

"On board their ship," Amethyst says. "They landed, fought us – threw us in these dinky little cells that were radioactive-protected or some junk like that –"

"Jasper head-butted me!" Steven says with a certain note of pride. "And gave me a black eye!" He points. The skin around his right eye is swollen and faintly blackish; the sight of it aches in Drakken's own flesh.

"Battle wounds, yo!" Amethyst cries and lifts her palm for a high-five.

In the midst of the chaos, Pearl sits up taller, spine as straight as a new textbook's. "Steven was able to escape from his cell because he's half human," she says, which sets Steven beaming again. "He broke out and rescued the…errm…the three of us."

"What about Lapis?" Drakken asks. It's not an angry demand – it is a bewildered one. He knows Steven would never leave Lapis, never in a thousand million centuries.

Everyone glances at Steven, whose eyes droop at the outer corners. "I tried to get her out," he says. "But she wouldn't come. She thought they would go easier on us if we didn't fight back – she didn't want to make any trouble."

Of course she didn't.

"Yeah, so, Steven busted all us out, Garnet kicked Jasper's butt, trashed the ship, made it crash, blah-blah-blah," Amethyst continues. "Peridot shot off an escape pod, so she's still somewhere on Earth." She gives a sour smile. "Comforting thought for the day."

Drakken shivers, and Steven pats his knee. The kid _is_ as nice as Lapis talked him up to be.

"Lapis survived the crash," Pearl says. "So did Jasper, though, and she was fully intent on attacking us again. So –"

Drakken suddenly longs to cover his ears. Slap his hands over them and shake his head until he banishes whatever she's about to tell him next. But he can't do that. He can't do anything except swallow hard and close his eyes and wait.

Just as Lapis must have waited for the crash she knew was coming.

" – Lapis fused with Jasper and used her water-manipulation powers to drag the fusion to the bottom of the ocean."

That is not what he expected to hear.

"Fused?" Drakken says. His knuckles are pointy against his gloves – that's how tightly his fists are knotted, matching his insides.

Pearl's mouth stops midway through shaping the next syllable. "Did she not tell you about fusion?" she asks.

"No. Yes. I mean, she did explain fusion to me." His words crack and bleed like chapped lips. "It's just – the rest of it – I don't understand…"

"It _is_ rather confusing," Pearl says – it's probably meant to be comforting. "Maybe you'd understand better if you saw it."

She rises from her queenly sit and waves both hands over her forehead. The gem on it begins to glow and then project a green-tinted, holographic feed.

"Fantastic," Drakken says, gaping.

The footage, though – there is a wild version of the Lapis he knows, with silver platters for eyes and stricken anger in her stance. A giant hand of water rises out of the ocean behind her, aimed at Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet. This must be from the time she was cracked, the time she told him about. She is a being of desperation and fear, iced with a brittle sheet of fierceness.

Pearl clucks a little and twiddles her fingers as though to scroll through the feed, turning it to fuzz. "No, no, this is from last year…ah, here we are!"

The fuzz comes into focus on the image of debris raining down on the sand, setting it aflame. Steven has cast some sort of pink bubble to protect himself and the three Gems present. The air itself nearly roars with anticipation.

Sure enough, the main body of the ship creaks and groans, and from it emerges a cinder block of a Gem, whose height must be somewhere in the seven-foot range and whose breadth is not far behind. One look at her, and Drakken instantly sees the Lorwardians – not just in the size, but in the carefully delineated war paint and the brawler's pose as well.

This must be Jasper.

She drags to her feet, glaring hatred at specifically Garnet, who no longer seems quite so tall, and lashing her with a rusty chain of a voice. "You only beat me because you're a fusion!" it says.

Drakken feels his eyes widen. He turns to Garnet, who gives him a barely perceptible nod in response, still as calm as a pond.

 _Huh. Wouldn't have guessed that._

"If I had someone to fuse with –" Jasper continues.

And at that moment the wreckage shifts again.

Drakken knows, he knows what's coming, and he can't direct his gaze away. It's like watching a train wreck. One time, he _did_ look away from a train wreck and nearly sent his mother to her doom by accident.

A waif pushes herself out of the rubble and manages to stand on weak legs. Drakken gets busy telling himself _it's not Lapis, it's not Lapis_ – and then she sprouts wings made out of water and attempts to fly away, and it can't be anyone else.

She doesn't get far. A hand as big around as Lapis's entire _leg_ locks around it and jerks her effortlessly to the ground, with a spit of, "Come here, brat!"

Every thin hair on Drakken's arms, on the back of his neck, bristles to attention, and he lets out a long, low growl. When there's a cry of "Lapis!", Drakken wonders why his voice has discarded puberty before realizing it's a playback of Steven's.

Lapis falls and squints up out of an almost-palpable daze.

There are scratches, blood, on her pixie face. Drakken wants to wipe it off. He even steps toward her, fingers fanned, before it occurs to him that it's only a hologram.

Jasper has no such problem. She's on Lapis in a split second, snatches Lapis's cheeks between her fingers and digs in as though she's trying to extract a molar from the outside. Even her nails are buff, and one of them is precariously close to a particularly painful-looking cut.

Never once, in all his months of reformation, has the urge to hurt someone again been this strong.

"Lapis! Fuse with me!" Jasper's words would be more at home launched at a spittoon than at Lapis.

Lapis's eyes try to shift, and Jasper brings them back to hers with a mere flick of her wrist. She keeps going, purring rustily, something about doesn't Lapis want revenge on the Crystal Gems (these fine folks right here?), since they held her prisoner once – _hello, as if Jasper hasn't?_

"Come on," Jasper finishes. She bares sharp teeth, finally releasing her physical grip but not the one embedded in her gaze. "You. Just. Gotta. Say. Yes."

Drakken squeezes the cushion he's on until he can be sure he won't throw up.

Lapis looks across the beach at the frightened clump of four. There's a new, clean focus and resolve as she peers back up at Jasper and consents – more of a quick head-snap than a nod. In that instant, Drakken understands the plan.

And desperately wishes he didn't.

Jasper splits her face open, a heinous imitation of a smile. Lapis's eyes slip shut, as though this is something she doesn't care to watch, doesn't care to remember.

Drakken recognizes the quick flits and high kicks that follow. It's her dance, her pretty Lapis-dance, and each move is like a blow to the kidneys.

There's one big hard shine all over Jasper's body, which is as still as the stone she is except for the knees vibrating in anticipation. Lapis dips into one of her dainty twirls, the hem of her finespun dress swishing across the sand, and Jasper grabs her hand, twirls her around, and forces her backward into a bend that looks closer to assault than fusion. Then there's a flash of doctor-bright light and he can't see Lapis _or_ her tormentor anymore.

Just her _and_ her tormentor, in a creature that rises to an enormous height, cackling down at him.

 _Oh. So_ that's _a fusion._

 _Mommy!_

The fusion named Garnet is mildly intimidating; this creature is grotesque, her head nearly level with the top of the beach cliff. She has two arms, two legs, and two additional appendages in between, which Drakken suspects can function as either/or. Her skin is sea-green, her bushy mane of hair and bitter-as-cyanide eyes – all four of them – a complementary mint.

Makes sense, scientifically. Orange mixed with blue.

Drakken tries with everything in him to convince himself it's just Jasper, taking on a strange, evil new form.

And for several rapidly-quickening heartbeats, that's easy to do. It is a cruel face, this fusion's face, and that all comes from Jasper. Lapis didn't look like that even when she _was_ hurting people.

But Drakken can't tear his gaze away in time to stop it from recognizing Lapis's impish chin. He notices chins – one of the inevitabilities of having one as prominent as his. And while the fusion is strong, like Jasper, it isn't bulky the way she is; someone else's influence keeps her muscles ropy and lean. This is what happens when you combine a brute with a pixie.

It's more terrifying than if there were no trace of Lapis at all.

The fusion continues to cackle, raising her hand. An identical one, though even larger if that's possible, forms from the ocean behind her, seemingly poised to slam a wall of water down on Steven and his caretakers.

At the last second, however, the water-hand grabs the fusion's arm instead. Holds on. Morphs into a chain. And begins to tow her backward into the fire-lit ocean.

"What the – ?" the fusion cries in a harsh rasp that must be Jasper's.

"I'm through being everyone's prisoner!" says someone else's voice. Even when she's yelling, Lapis's voice somehow remains soft and quiet. It undergirds her words with power. "Now you're _my_ prisoner – and I'm never letting you go!"

By now the fusion is up to her chin – Lapis's chin – in the water. Her two pairs of eyes appear to spread in opposite directions as if they're being pulled by two different magnets. The entire face strains and bucks.

"Let's stay on this miserable planet – together!" comes Lapis's higher pitch. Drakken listens for her innocence, but he can't hear it.

The fusion's head sinks.

Two slaps of water come back together over the vanishing point, as though it's nothing more than a raindrop. The footage blips back into Pearl's gemstone, and Drakken continues to stare at empty space. Not until he finally gasps for air does he realize how proud he is of Lapis's bravery.

How he would trade it in a nanosecond for disappointment in her cowardice.

"She calls herself Malachite," Pearl says softly.

Drakken's heard of that – a rock crystal, naturally occurring only in that one greenish color. Used by the ancient Egyptians in makeup. He always thought it was kind of pretty.

He doesn't think that anymore.

"I'm very sorry, Dr. Drakken," Pearl continues. "I know this must be very hard on your…human…emotional… structure."

Her sympathy seems at once arbitrary and sincere. She deserves a smile, but Drakken can't summon one. He writes her a mental IOU.

Garnet speaks up. "Lapis did a brave thing, but that's not what fusion is supposed to be for," she says. Her voice, though still flat, is not emotionless anymore – now it is stern.

"I know," Drakken whispers. He's not functioning well enough to grow angry, but that won't stop him from defending Lapis's honor. "She told me it's supposed to be about trust."

The barest hint of a smile tips Garnet's mouth, reducing the enigma.

"You still haven't answered my question, though," Drakken says. His throat is squeezing, making yelling more trouble than yelling should be, more trouble than it's worth. " _Where is she_? I know you can search the bottom of the ocean – even _humans_ can search the bottom of the ocean! We have submersibles now…and scuba gear – I _told_ her about scuba gear. . ."

 _Bring her back._

Steven's got his arms locked in a tight embrace around a couch pillow, and he pokes an identical one into Drakken's side. Drakken accepts it gratefully, hugs it to his own stomach, and rocks.

"Dude, we've been trying!" Amethyst's exhale is one part sigh, two parts _Huh!_ "But even as honkin' huge as she is, the ocean's even bigger, and a fusion who doesn't wanna be found can hide like nobody's business."

Drakken can't answer this time. He can only stare down at his fists, fists barely visible through the skin under his eyes that always bunches up when he's on the verge of tears. But this round never comes to fruition, staying and stinging his nasal passages. He's always cried at the stupidest, littlest, pettiest things – why can't he cry now?

"She was brave," Drakken breathes. "I knew she could be."

The silence is respectful, but Drakken can't appreciate it – not even when Amethyst coaxes him into a fist-bump that he weakly returns.

"We need to find her soon, too," Pearl murmurs, almost to herself. She glances out one of the windows at the sky, as if she can tell the day and the hour by it. She probably can. "If a fusion's held for too long – an _unhealthy_ fusion, that is," she adds after another anxious glance at Garnet, "both of the Gems can lose their identities."

Drakken's lower lip quivers.

"You didn't havta tell him _that_ part!" Amethyst whirls on Pearl as easily as she was whirled on back at the door, upsetting a lavender hunk of hair to settle back down over her glare. "Look, now he's about to puke or something!"

She reads people well, Drakken observes numbly. He _does_ feel as though he might lose the Fruit Roll-Ups he consumed on the way over here. Judging from the frantic look Pearl takes at the sanded-wood floors, her mind is on the same path.

Steven cuts in, his kind face more effective than Pepto-Bismol. "No, it's all right," he says to Amethyst. "He needs to know."

For a child who plays with an Elefun, Steven looks awfully mature as he clicks his gaze straight onto Drakken's. "I talked to Lapis in a dream," he says, "because I guess that's a thing I can do, and I asked her where she was, and she wouldn't tell me. She said she didn't want to be rescued. She's still trying to save _us_. Probably you too," he adds in a child's excuse for a whisper – the one that Drakken never outgrew, if you believe Shego.

Drakken feels as though he's been hit with one of his own doom rays – the one where the victim freezes, locked in suspended animation, and then is wrenched by a series of spasms. He is immediately sorry he ever intended to subject anyone to that type of torture.

It isn't that he can't imagine his life without Lapis – his thoughts of her since returning home have been infrequent, if fond. But it isn't _fair_ for her to be merged with her worst enemy at the bottom of the ocean. She's a nice Gem who loves her people and tries to understand humanity and wants to do the right thing, and she deserves to be okay.

Steven nods several times, as if by bobbing _his_ head he can delete the worry from Drakken's. The folds of the kid's mostly-bare arm glisten with sweat, though it's still far enough away from puberty to be stench-free. "But we'll find her, even if she doesn't want to be found. We'll find her, because I am a gumshoe," he says, reaching into his denim pocket and producing a plastic detective badge. "Fifty more pages, and I'll be an inspector-in-training."

The badge is inscribed with the words _Earned at the Beach City Public Library Summer Reading Program_ , but Steven has the same determined eye-glint that Lapis wore. He will never stop looking for her, not ever, Drakken knows.

He pulls his knees up to the pillow and searches the faces looking back at him. Each one is alike only in concern – Garnet's stoic and barely there, Amethyst's rough-and-tumble, Pearl's uneasy, and Steven's chubby and bright.

A knot ties in Drakken's throat, though not tightly enough to prevent him from saying, "I want to help you find her." He hasn't taken the time to fine-tune his voice, and yet its thickness, speckled with fragility, doesn't embarrass him now. "I – I have some property down in the Caribbean that I still own, and there's ocean down there, and it's all really one big ocean – even if the globe-makers split it into four parts, and so she could be there! I have equipment! I could scan…or something."

Drakken hugs the pillow tighter and hears his blood roaring in his ears, still circulating as if nothing is wrong, its flow deceptively stalwart. His limbs are weightless and trembling, but there is a heavy heat-pocket in his chest anchoring him to the ground. It is exactly how he felt when he realized he needed to save the world, needed to atone for his past misdeeds.

Those same four faces stare back at him.

Pearl stamps on a grin. "Well, that's very…nice of you, Dr. Drakken," she says. Her words seem to pat him on the head, with no idea how they are patronizing him. "But we've already been scouring the ocean bottom all week, and if _our_ abilities are being put to the test, I don't –"

"Pearl." Garnet's monotone interrupts. "It can't hurt."

Drakken shoots Garnet a thoroughly grateful look. Experience has taught him that those embrace you, in a non-physical manner that can't panic your nervous system. Garnet might be even less big on hugs than Drakken is.

("Less big" sounds strange, but "smaller" won't really work for this turn of phrase.)

Drakken lifts his head, sets his jaw. "And could you do that projection thing again – because it's marvelous that you're able to do that" – this pleasantly startles Pearl, he can tell – "and show me this Paradox person? I could keep an eye out for her, too!"

Pearl raises one corrective finger. "Peri _dot_ ," she says.

Oh, yes. That makes sense, seeing as how "peridot" is a gem…and "paradox" is more of a time-traveling concept.

Drakken employs Steven's tactic, bobbing his head to see if he can incite a chain reaction. "Yes, her. Pretty please?" he says.

Pearl responds well to manners, and, with no further begging, projects another greenish image from her forehead. This one appears to be naturally green, judging from how deep the tint goes, and it shows a triangular-headed, pointy-faced, snarky-eyed Gem lifting her lip in his general direction. Shego skips across Drakken's mind, although this Gem's long, wiry arms and legs have an odd, sort of metallic quality.

Drakken gulps. "Yes. Well. Thank you."

"We'll find her, Dr. Drakken," Steven says. "And we'll find Lapis, too. We'll find Lapis, and then I'll have her give you a call or something. Here – lemme give you my cell phone number."

Drakken pushes aside the _yeesh-you-have-a-cell-phone-already_ instinct and, with tingling fingers, pokes in the digits that Steven recites for him. He titles his new contact "Steven U."

Perhaps it is intentional that Drakken opens his photo folder next. It does occur to him that he wants to jog the memories of a beach that _wasn't_ on fire, no cinders raining from the sky and no angry metal warped on the sand.

He forgot, however, that it wasn't just the landscape he snapped pictures of.

There's the sandcastle he and Lapis made that one day – the one that she protected from the tide until he could get the perfect shot. There they are goofing off for a selfie – or it is a groupie? The picture captures Lapis in a rare moment, with her guard down but her wonder still intact. Her cheeks are puffed out, nose wrinkled, making a silly face for the camera.

Drakken locks his focus there, commanding himself not to remember that face scratched and bloody, her body slammed down like one of those novelty slap bracelets. Only Lapis's hands waft into his thoughts, the blue skin torn, the fingers extended toward a no-doubt-crushing grip in order to save Steven. Her courage and her fear fuse into something far more beautiful than Malachite.

And it _hurts_.

There's still so much to show her of Earth. Butterflies. Marshmallows. Snowman Hank. He has to give her the teddy bear Mother made just for her; he just _has_ to.

It could be hours that Drakken sits there, before he scrolls to the photo of them saying goodbye – him loading his hovercraft, her waving with her skirt flapping in the breeze – and the eye-bunching program resumes. He stirs only when he feels a presence at his elbow, a presence warm with little-boy stickiness.

Steven examines the picture over Drakken's shoulder, his head tilting – _knowingly_ is the only word. "Do you love her?" Steven says. "I think you love her."

Drakken blinks into the image of Lapis, smiling shyly up at him from his phone's screen.

"Steven!" Pearl bursts out. Turquoise blooms across her white cheekbones, which Drakken supposes is the Gems' version of a blush, as she swivels to meet Drakken's eyes. "I am so sorry," she sputters.

"For what?" Drakken looks at Pearl without really seeing her. "He might be right."

 **~"The only witnesses have declined to comment" - read as "Garnet broke my camera." ;)**

 **And of course it was Connie who got Steven involved in the Summer Reading Program.**


	10. News

**~Hey, I'm back. . . and just about to jump out of my skin with happiness over last week's eppies. I guess I shouldn't put spoilers, but this whole chapter's going to be a spoiler, sooo. . .**

 **The next chapter might be awhile. . . and it'll probably be contradicted all over the place once more episodes air. But, hey, I knew this was going to be an AU when I started it! I'm just also OCD and like to adhere to canon as closely as possible. Go figure. :P**

 **Hope you all enjoy!~**

 _The lovely Lapis Lazuli – here played by the winged teddy bear Mother embroidered herself – writhes at the bottom of the ocean, her eyes empty of tears but her heart full of them. Though she can breathe underwater – because she's a Gem, and she's just amazing like that – her spirit is slowly suffocating in the harshness of her surroundings. Faint rays of sunlight beckon her from far, far above, and she cannot go to them._

 _For she is chained, of her own design, to the nasty Jasper – here played by an Incredible Hulk action figure Eddy left at his house a long time ago. It takes effort to hold down someone that much bigger and meaner, effort and an unyielding sense of duty._

 _She thinks of Steven, the one who saved her, healed her, forgave her. She thinks of all the things of Earth she has to learned to accept, even enjoy. She thinks of these, even as her identity flakes away in linty bits._

 _Malachite is the only way to keep everyone safe. She must stay Malachite._

 _It is becoming easier and easier to stay Malachite – harder and harder to retain Lapis Lazuli._

 _She is alone with her worst enemy, unless you count the anglerfish and the lantern eels and various other creepy deep-sea life that lurk near the bottom. And she is frightened._

 _Enter the hero!_

 _The semi-dashing and not-quite-handsome Dr. Drakken – here played by his own teddy bear, Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second – swoops down to save the day. He dives without fear into the ocean – here represented by an empty bathtub, since teddy bears don't tend to be water-resistant – taking full advantage of his scuba tank – here represented by a large LEGO brick on his back. The salt water stings his eyes, but he pays no notice as he chops down, down, down to the abyss, shoving aside the walls of water that stand between him and his beloved friend._

 _Until he spots Lapis._

 _Drakken does not question how he can see a mile below the surface, nor why Lapis is visible when the fusion is still reigning supreme. He doesn't question any of it. He swims down beside her, and he bubbles, "Lapis?"_

 _She turns, a vacant quarter-turn, as though she can't recall why the name rings a bell. Her skin is washed green and haggard. "I'm sorry. I can't come with you," she says, with flatness that could rival Garnet's, save for the quake at its edges._

 _It blasts at his heart with laser precision._

 _Drakken digs into his own (admittedly shallow) well of courage in the face of her terrible blankness. "Lapis…you don't have to do this."_

 _"Yes, I do."_

 _She erodes further with every word. Soon it will be too late – if it isn't already._

 _It is this thought, this soul-ripping possibility, that pushes from Drakken advice too wise to have originated even with him. "You don't have to do it_ alone _."_

 _Lapis has no response this time. Her bob has become Malachite's seaweed tresses, stringing in the fierce current. The eyes – now blue, now green, now silver – swim over him._

 _Drakken curls his fingers around both of her wrists, feeling Jasper's sturdiness in them. "Please, Lapis. We can help you."_

 _This protest gets only halfway out before it dies; it dies and something of Lapis returns to her face. Her body braces, refusing to weep. "Steven," she gasps. "And the Crystal Gems. I have to save them."_

 _She is begging him to understand. And for once, he does._

 _Sir Fuzzymuffin folds his arms around As-Yet-Unnamed-Female-Bear, pillowing her into a squishy, teddy-bear embrace. "Then we'll save them together," he says._

 _He waits, waits to feel her reciprocate, not by holding on, by letting go: relinquishing, unfusing, surrendering Jasper to the combined wrath of_ all _the Gems. As well as his own. It's hard not to relish the idea of dangling her out a window by a slender vine – maybe a marigold; his marigolds have been very feisty this fall…_

 _But that's not the important part. His breath holds in his lungs until he knows that her wings, slowly and magically as the oxidization of brass, will spread._

 _And "unfettered" is the only word._

This is what Dr. Drakken playacts when the worry begins to choke him.

In reality, though, he is helpless – helpless as a jellyfish washed ashore.

The scans from his old island lair have turned up nothing. There is no lapis lazuli within a three-hundred-mile ocean radius, and the only jasper a pair of cheap earrings an unimpressed girlfriend must have hurled into the sea – some thirty years ago, judging by the corrosion. (What a snobby lady.)

Some days – many days, in fact – Drakken is able to keep himself busy enough that the anxiety is nothing more than a lingering unpleasant odor in the breeze. Many days, he wakes up with the remains of whatever nightmare already fading from his memory banks, gets dressed and heads to Global Justice, spends the day making the world a safer place, and returns home to watch cartoons that'll keep his mind from wandering.

Many days, this works.

And some days, it doesn't.

One of those days, he's buying groceries at Smarty Mart and walks past a jewelry display. Hanging from a golden hook is a beautiful necklace whose silver chain renders the stones even more vibrant – the stones that are dark and blue and teardrop-shaped.

It's not the real thing, not in any sense of the word – not the living, sentient Lapis, and probably not even genuine Earth lapis, because that stuff is rare and expensive. _Valuable_ , so valuable. And yet Drakken's cart comes to an abrupt halt, squealing its wheels nearly straight into the display.

He approaches it at something partway between a skitter and a jog. It would be so much more poetic if he could sift the chain like sand between his fingers, but his hands are overly emotional and only tangle in the strands so that it's looped around itself three times before he can bring it to their tips.

"Please," he murmurs, to anyone who's listening, clutching the lapis. "Please, please, please."

These are the days when he doesn't know what to do. It is hard not to characterize Lapis as a damsel in distress, tiny and shy as she is, and yet he remembers the iron in her voice when she confronted Jasper. She is stronger than he gives her credit for.

And that's part of what makes it so darn _hard_. There's no textbook on rescuing a damsel in distress who doesn't want to be rescued in the first place.

Drakken takes some comfort in the teddy bear Mother made for Lapis. She's pleasantly plump and brown, the way any good teddy bear should be, but Mother made certain there was some resemblance to Drakken's description. The teddy has wings – not attached wings that you can grab onto and use them to hoist the bear, but shiny embossed things, stitched almost down to the wispy skirt Mother knitted around her waist. She also sports a gemstone, albeit a plastic one, between her shoulder blades.

That was Drakken's own doing. He accompanied Mother to the craft store in order to help pick out the teddy-bear materials: the exact shade of russet-brown felt, the precise stitching for the mouth, the perfect black seed-shaped buttons for the eyes. Mother's such an talent seamstress – she can sew the eyes just right, so the fur doesn't start encroaching on them, as it does on tackier stuffed animals within a few months, and give the bear a permanent glower.

(All right, so Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second has one, but that's only because Mother also graced him with Drakken's signature unibrow.)

Lapis's bear, on the other hand, must have the same gaze she does – elliptical. Hesitant. Guileless.

It was there, in Aisle 5, that Drakken spotted bags of gems. Obviously fakes, cheaply die-cut, because a bag of real rubies – Drakken wonders vaguely if Lapis knows a Ruby – would cost significantly more than five bucks. But they were pretty nonetheless.

Mother was selecting the second fabric for the wings – ocean-hued, watery and shimmery all at once - when a flash of blue caught his attention– blue always does. Drakken glanced down at a baggie full of blue plastic stones. Most were too light-colored and luminous to be anything but sapphires, but he did spy a few darker gems in there. He picked the bag up and rooted through its plastic sides with his fingers until he found a teardrop shape that summoned its brethren in Drakken's eyes.

Drakken remembered Lapis saying that her gem was the most fundamental part of her – "everything I am stems from it," is how she put it. And while Drakken isn't well-versed enough in the science of Gems to understand how this is accomplished, you didn't have to be the super-genius he was to gather that little stone was of the utmost importance.

It didn't take much begging to convince Mother. Hardly any, actually. After all, Drakken decided, she could always use the leftovers in…scrapbooking…or whatever craft-related thing mothers did in their free time.

Once the rest of the teddy bear was complete, Drakken had the honor of peeling the sticky end off the plastic gem and positioning it, tongue rooting at the corner of his lips, equidistant from the bear's birdlike shoulder blades. Mother supported it with the feed of a hot glue gun. It wasn't as seamless as the one on Lapis's back; still, it was a more-than-passable replica.

Drakken gave the bear a big hug.

He still does, every time he opens his closet and sees it – _her_ – sitting on top of his board games. He hugs her. He wonders what Lapis will name her, if she'll like her, if she'll get the chance to meet her.

And he keeps busy. Bowling with the henchmen. Movie night with Shego. Working at Global Justice to make the world a safer place for humans and misplaced Gems.

That's where he is right now, in the bathroom, just finishing washing his hands. Drakken sticks them under the dryer, which is powerful enough to blast the moisture straight off his fingers and nearly plaster his skin to the bone. It's also powerful enough to weld its noise into his eardrums, disallowing access to any other, so it's only when the dryer shuts off that Drakken hears the snazzy jangle of his cell phone.

Hmm. Odd. Personal calls don't usually come in during work hours. Unless it's an emergency.

 _Don't panic!_ Drakken commands himself. He glances at the screen – and feels his blood cells transform into ice cubes.

It reads, _Steven U_.

It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's good news. It's bad news. It's –

It's news – who cares?

Drakken cares. He cares with his heart vibrating its way up his throat.

He can't get too excited – easier said than done – because it's not even a guarantee that this will put an end to the not-knowing that's driving him to the brink of madness. With his luck, the Crystal Gems are probably just calling to say they found Polka-Dot or whatever her name is…

By some miracle, Drakken fumbles the phone open with the useless, fluttering moth wings that his hands have become. If it _is_ bad news, Steven will deliver it gently, which is some consolation. He shakes out the greeting: "Hello, Dr. Drakken speaking."

It's bad news. It's good news.

"Dr. Drakken?"a fairy voice asks.

It's good news.

"Steven wanted me to call you," Lapis continues. "He said you were worried?"

It takes several minutes for Drakken to answer the slight lilt to her words, the unspoken question mark. The surface tension across his eyeballs breaks, and tears bubble over like foam dribbling down a mug of root beer. His shoulders collapse with relief and then jolt back and forth, over and over.

"You're alive," Drakken finally blubbers. He falls against a wall – or what he suspects is a wall, having pretty much lost all sense of time and place.

There's a tiny lapse. "You remembered me," Lapis says. Drakken can envision how her smile looks from how quiet she sounds – thin, fragile, its ends pointed upward, daring to hope something might be there to meet them.

"I did," Drakken concurs. He wipes at his cheeks with the backs of his wrists, smearing salty water across his face. "And that's saying something because I have – I have – I have a really bad m-m-memory…"

Drakken lets the rest trail off into a few more joyous sobs. Lapis's silence on the other end of the phone is confused, but Drakken can't comprehend anything beyond the fact that she is speaking to him, her own voice from her own lips, the lips of a single, solitary Gem. There is something new, something stronger, between her syllables, but none of Jasper's harshness. For the moment, he isn't even curious to find out what happened.

He just wants to stand here and hold the phone and listen to her be okay.

"Are you still there?" Lapis finally says.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" Drakken says – overdoing it is not even an issue under these circumstances. "I'm still here. I just – for a second – I wasn't sure what to say."

Thank the heavens above that this child's parents bought him a cell phone. He'll never rail against its uses in adolescence again.

"That's all right." Lapis's voice seems to shrug. "I just wanted to make sure I was talking into the right end. Steven – I _am_ talking into the right end, aren't I? These are so different from what we have on Homeworld…"

"You're doing really good, Lapis," says a kid-voice, vaguely familiar and every bit as cheery as Drakken's recollections. "But if you get your mouth a little farther down, closer to this end, it'll come through better."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks." There's a rustle, which Drakken imagines are strings of her bobbed hair resisting static electricity – if Gems are prone to such nuisances the way humans are – and then Lapis sounds closer. "Is that better?"

Drakken uncurls a clenched fist, observing the sweat that sparkles in his palms. Despite that and despite the rattle of a toilet that should have stopped flushing minutes ago and probably needs its chain readjusted, and despite the burned-out light bulb and the crack of his back suffering from its rigid rest and the fact that someone could walk in any moment and catch him crying –

"It's perfect," Drakken replies.

"You were worried about me," Lapis repeats, in a key of disbelief that vibrates across Drakken's soul. He recognizes it – the stricken awe that comes when the cord is looped around your neck and the medal taps gently against your chest, gracing you with worth you struggled to find for yourself anymore.

"Of _course_ I was worried about you," Drakken says. "You're my friend! Plus, also I'm an enormous worrywart – but first and foremost because you're my friend," he adds quickly, "and that's more important, and I was so worried you wouldn't survive – or you _would_ but not really be you anymore because of what happened when you fused –" and it is just now coming to him that he might still need to worry about that. How does the reversal of fusion – un-fusing, de-fusing – work? Is it a clean split, or does a tiny particle of Malachite still infect Lapis now?

His sentences smear together like marker on posterboard, and through them he can hear Lapis say, "Are you breathing? I know humans need to breathe."

"Quite so!" Drakken sucks in a huge breath and feels it gurgle a path down to his lungs.

There's a pause, and then Lapis says, "I'm sorry I made you worry." The note of apology in there now almost skewers Drakken, and yet it also confirms she is still one-hundred-percent Lapis, because who _else_ would apologize for saving the world?

Drakken lets out a snort so juicy with pulsing emotions that he has to stop and wipe off his phone's screen. "Are you kidding? I'm so proud of you! You protected us all – risked your life – defended Steven – hang on a second…" He transfers the phone to his right hand, freeing his dominant left to seize a wad of public-restroom paper towels. Texturally speaking, they're closer to sandpaper than Kleenex, but they're as good a surface as any to blow his nose.

"But I'm okay now," Lapis says softly. Another, briefer pause. "I swear."

It's the faintest whisper of a smile he can hear now. Even with tears drooling down into it, Drakken wouldn't be able to dim his own grin, the one he's been wearing ever since picking up the phone to the sound of her, for anything: power, glory, cash money, a lifetime supply of Cracker Jack – prizes included.

He catches a glimpse of himself in the one of the glazed mirrors hanging over the sink; he rather resembles a jack-o'-lantern carved by a sloppy child, though Drakken can only think of a few times in his whole life when he's cared less. " _Where_ are you now?" he says.

Lapis's automatic response is, "With Steven," which Drakken surmises must, for her, be a synonym for _safe_. "And the Crystal Gems," she continues. "We're all staying at a barn right outside Beach City. It used to belong to Steven's aunt and uncle?"

There's confusion in the way she says those terms. Drakken claps himself in the forehead. "I forgot to teach you about aunts and uncles!"

"That's all right. Steven already did." The smile in her sound waves grows brighter, though still wispy.

"And what about…the big mean one?" Drakken doesn't want to say her name, not until he realizes the alternative is to have Lapis say her name, and he wants that even less. "Jasper?"

There's a starched silence.

"I don't want to talk about her," Lapis says. She sounds cold now, as though winter has come over her early.

"Right, right, I understand." Drakken feeds his hand back through his hair. "Neither do I. I just wanted to know – is she someplace where she can't hurt you?"

"Yes."

A rush of balmy tenderness surges through Drakken's muscles, only to give way to the tension of fierce heat. "Is she someplace where _I_ can't hurt _her_?"

This pause is just long enough for her to blink; Drakken times it. "Yes," Lapis says. There it is again – that pleasant, precious wonder that she is of value to someone.

"Then that's all I really need to know." Not quite true – there are still several more possibilities to be curious about, and Drakken will be. Later. "Carry on."

"Well, we just finished –"

And then her voice grows distant somehow, which quickens in Drakken's throat. He clenches the partition behind him and doesn't loosen his grip until Lapis says, from far away, "Oops – Steven, I think I hit a button."

"Oh, it's okay," Steven says. "You just put us on speakerphone. If you hit it again, it turns back off."

In the shuffle for the correct button, Drakken hears the breeze shrieking happily through leaves that haven't fallen yet, as though it too is overjoyed to have Lapis alive and well and un-Malachite. He hears chirping birds in place of whining seagulls, and he hears the big fusion named Garnet shooing her friends away:

"Pearl. Amethyst. Get back. The girl **needs** some alone time."

"Oh. Should I go, too?" Steven says.

"No," Lapis says firmly. "You stay." There's another rustle, right before speakerphone bleeps off, and Drakken just senses without seeing that Lapis has reached for her little friend's hand and squeezed. "Drakken? Am I back?"

"Yes! You're back!" Drakken gets the impression he wasn't supposed to whoop that, not right into her invisible ear, but who's even keeping track of such things at this point?

Lapis apparently isn't. She picks up where she left off – a skill that Drakken himself never mastered. "Well, I guess we all just got done stopping the Cluster, so…"

An error message flashes in Drakken's brain. "What's 'the Cluster'?" he says, pronouncing the words, familiar only in a different context, with as much grandeur as possible.

"It _was_ a Homeworld weapon," is the tight reply.

Drakken has "Yes, but why –" out before he registers it, that her voice is teetering on a precipice, and it will go careening over if he presses for more information. He wishes to vanquish it, exile it, barter it for the sound of her sweet spirit manifesting itself again.

Cataloguing that, too, as a question to be posed at another time to another person – perhaps the fastidious Pearl; or the quiet but seemingly wise Garnet; or even the crudely enthusiastic Amethyst – Drakken repairs his sentence, changing it to, "Why – don't I come see you? If that's all right, that is?"

His old villain motivational tapes would scold him, say he's not supposed to set himself up for failure like that. But Lapis is long overdue for some common courtesy if nothing else.

For a moment, all Drakken hears are soft, superfluous breaths stirring at the other end of the phone. Then Lapis nearly whispers, "Yes. I'd – I'd like that."

Her words are tinged with what Drakken could almost describe as grogginess. "So, when would work for you?" he asks. "Does Saturday work? Because I'm free on Saturday…"

In the span before she answers, Drakken can almost hear Lapis's brows twisting. "When is Saturday?" she says. Her near-embarrassment tunnels inside him and squeezes. It's not her fault her species operates under an entirely different lunar calendar – and he is just about to reassure her of this when she actually yawns. "Sorry, I was asleep for awhile, and I guess I haven't woken all the way up yet."

The knot in Drakken's stomach would do a Boy Scout proud. Gems don't need to sleep – not under normal circumstances anyway; Lapis told him that the very first day. It's wrenching to calculate what put her into emergency shut-down, what she suffered that not even a Gem's body is built to endure. "Are you _sure_ you're okay?" he says cautiously.

"Yes. I'm fine." The tenderness of it is a welcome respite from Shego's approach to concern, which was always flippant and clenched-toothed, as if she were mortified to depend on someone for even a nanosecond. "Well, I was really weak at first, but now – now I'm better than I've been in six thousand years."

 _Wow._

She throws out the time so casually. When Drakken closes his eyes, he can see a vast background spread out from her present – a lifetime of eternal youth, unseasoned against the blows of pain and fear and loneliness. It works to lift her far beyond him.

Drakken says the only thing he can think of that might be able to bring her back within reach. "Today's Thursday. So Saturday's in two days."

"Oh." Lapis's hair squeaks against the phone as she nods. "Yes. Two days is fine."

The thought of seeing her again feels like fizzy water bubbling away a stomachache. He aches to fold his arms around her and –

And what? Hold her? Tickle her under that chin that is now wholly hers again? Kiss her? What does one do when one loves a woman?

Gulp. Steven was right.

Drakken squints up into the foggy light from the bulbs, including the one that keeps hiccupping on and off, grinding electricity like fingernail clippings. "Lapis," he begins, "I just realized something. And I need to tell you now, before anything else happens, okay?" His knees lock under him as though he is preparing for the impact of a meteor – something he has never really experienced in his life, though Lapis might have.

The line stills for a beat. And then – "All right. Go ahead." Lapis sounds bewildered.

Drakken inhales sharply again – because humans need to breathe. He doesn't allow himself a moment to harvest his remaining scraps of courage. The doubt will only bleed in if he waits for it, so he doesn't:

"I love you."

His words waver; their meaning does not.

The silence is even longer this time, so long that Drakken fears the connection has been dropped, the phone hurriedly handed off to Steven in complete incomprehension, or the whole thing revealed to be a dream that he is even now preparing to wake up from.

When Lapis speaks again, her voice is air. "Wow," she says. "No one's ever told me that before. What…what do I say back?"

Drakken's tongue is cemented to the roof of his mouth, requiring several large swallows to free. "Well – you thank me. And if you love me back, you can say 'I love you, too.'"

As soon as the words have ventured out, Drakken considers slurping them back in, if such a thing can be done. He's done it now, pushed it too far. Just the knowledge that Lapis is alive and well and safe and un-fused is sufficient, and he probably should have left it at that.

This silence is the longest yet, stretched longer by a sudden mindfulness of a metallic dent in the stall door poking right below Drakken's collar. Concentration is unachievable, let alone comfort. Drakken's ready to switch the phone back to his other ear in order to reposition his shoulder blades – until a soft exhale that can only come from a flabbergasted Gem filters its way through.

"Oh. Okay," Lapis says. "Thank you. I…." Silence, infinite as her space home. "I love you, too."

The rattling toilet chain transforms into a choir of a thousand angels.

(It's unabashedly sappy, some would argue. Drakken would contend that he and Lapis have earned themselves a moment or two of unabashed sap.)

There is a delighted, childish gasp from somewhere beyond Lapis, and Drakken knows immediately it must be Steven's. He can envision the stars that must be forming in the kid's eyes.

 _Now what?_

Drakken scrubs at the back of his neck. The miniscule hairs beneath his fingers tingle in the same way they used to before he launched a scheme he was particularly proud of. "So….I guess I'll see you Saturday, then?"

"Bye." The giggle is a threadbare version of the bell-like one sealed in a little treasure box in his brain, securely nestled just above the cerebellum, and yet it's mighty.

Drakken's crying again when he pushes the "END CALL" button. Lapis, of course, isn't. She never has, in all the (admittedly short) time he's known her. Of course, when he considers what she has told him about her life, about the war, about her confinement, it's not hard to conclude she must have been wrung dry long ago.

Some selfish sector of him hopes she will weep someday, so he can be the one to – clumsily – dry her tears, since he could not be the one to rescue her from her watery prison. Whether that happens or not, he's fully persuaded he needs to be there, even if he can do nothing more than offer her some competition for deepest psychological scars.

Drakken clacks his phone case shut, feeling like – well, "a new person" isn't entirely accurate, not to mention how clichéd it sounds. But definitely an older, pre-owned person with minimal wear and tear.

With petals that somehow pair well with the grin of utter giddiness, a new layer of varnish on his paint, as if he's a stone that's been polished, although – and here he can't resist being clever – he's actually been polished _by_ a stone.

Mint condition, for sure, Drakken thinks as he studies his reflection in the glass Lapis still fears so. Why, he might even fetch a decent price on EBay.

 _Genuine mad scientist in love, rare blue breed – bidding starts at ten dollars. (Best when purchased alongside genuine lapis lazuli.)_


	11. Reunion

**~SHE LIVES!**

 **Sorry this update took so long, guys. I had a _lot_ of ground to cover in this chapter. The good news is, it's extra-long for your enjoyment. And my first time writing for Greg and Peridot, so. . . that was fun. **

**Thanks to everyone who's followed, faved, reviewed, and read. You guys rock. :)**

 **Next chapter we'll switch back to Lapis's POV. ~**

A day and a half later, it is finally Saturday – and reasonably into the morning so that the fog has faded away and Steven should be awake and ready to receive visitors.

Forty-two hours of dancing around the kitchen with a broomstick, singing love ballads Drakken remembers from his childhood; tossing and turning with excitement at night; periodically pausing to squeal and clap.

Two thousand, five hundred and twenty minutes, but who's counting?

Well, Drakken is. The tingle perching in his limbs never accompanied any of his numerous evil plots, just the one good one – to save the Earth.

Only now, in the last seven thousand, two hundred seconds, does distress begin to bleed in; he is pierced by a tiny sliver, questioning whether or not Drakken's substantial intellect makes up for his utter lack of data on relationships.

He's never had one before, not one of this type. Not the type where he says "I love you," and then the woman says, "I love you too." What the women always say – what Drakken almost believed they're _supposed_ to say – is "Oh, you're sweet," or "You're a good friend," or "I'm so sorry, Drew, but…"

This is new, uncharted territory. Is this reunion a date, then? Should he wash his hair-spikes shiny and sleek? Douse himself in cologne? Wear a tie?

Does he even _own_ a tie?

Drakken's balancing, with limited success, on one leg, stuffing the other through what might be the wrong hole of his business-casual khakis, when it occurs to him that his only halfway fancy shirt has short, capped sleeves. Weather's getting too cool to spend the entire day wearing it. He lets his pants fall in a heap around his ankles.

The weather _is_ getting cooler. The sun is setting earlier, too, and the red and orange encroach on the edges of the leaves like the beginning of a blush. Even little Steven's voice, as heard by Drakken on the phone, sounds lower than it was a few months before.

So much has changed on a planet already foreign to her; the least Drakken can do is present some familiarity. He wants to bear more than a passing resemblance to the Drakken she first met on the beach, whose wet ponytail dribbled down the back of his old-fashioned bathing suit as he offered her his towel. If he arrives all gussied up, she probably won't be impressed – she'll be terrified.

After all, won't _he_ panic if _he_ sees the slightest deviation from the picture of Lapis stored in his mind for the past six months – and as his phone's background for the last two thousand, five hundred and twenty minutes?

Instead, Drakken runs a brush through his hair, another over his teeth, applies deodorant, and wriggles into his lab coat, which is comfortable in every sense of the word. He snaps a photo of himself and sends it to Shego, texting her, **How do I look?**

Her prompt reply is, **Like a dork.**

Drakken thrusts his fists through the air in triumph.

An unused plastic garbage sack holds toiletries, a couple of changes of clothes, and Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second. Lapis's teddy bear, however, straddles Drakken's shoulders. And while he heaves the garbage bag into the hovercraft and wedges it under the dashboard, he places her in the passenger seat and arranges her so that she can sit up – small and untidy and nervous, yet ever-striving, ever-determined to maintain her own essence.

Drakken squats to buckle the bear's seat belt and begins to address her softly, deliberately forgetting that she is an inanimate object and therefore deaf. "We're going to go meet your new owner," he says, in the same voice he uses when he's trying to coax his poodle out from under the bed. "Her name is Lapis Lazuli, and she's just going to _love_ you! She's gone through a really tough time recently, and she'll need somebody she can cuddle with who won't try to hug her back – or judge her – or fuse with her."

The bear stares solemnly back at him, and in her eyes, black and seed-like as they are, Drakken can see the chemical solution of Lapis's personality: layers of old fear being peeled back to display the playfulness and the full-bodied wonder. Unscientific as it is, he would swear the thing understands what he's saying.

It is a long flight, stretched and fidgety, and Drakken whoops for joy when Beach City's welcoming highway sign, difficult to see from the hovercraft, comes into view.

The city's previous collectively held breath seems to have been let out in a ripple, easing the landmarks back into a sense of relief. Debris from the giant space hand has long since been disposed of. Now there are only cracks in the ground – some skinny as a pinkie finger, others gaping wide and nasty – as if it's been overrun by moles, which are actually pretty hateful vermin for being so oddly cute.

Farther away from the shops, out into the fields, trees are yellowing with fall, though the grass remains a luscious, rolling shade of green. The barn is easy to locate, as rusty-red as if it came from the pages of an old storybook, connecting toward a pond and another deep, almost tunnel-like hole in the soil.

Drakken narrowly avoids colliding with the water tower once he chances a glance down and spies the six figures, just now coming into focus, that stand before the barn's weathered doors. He doesn't recognize some green person, whose stunted height and pointy head remind Drakken of a department store elf. But the others –

There's Garnet, in her constant straight stance, like a black-capped, red highlighter that never runs out of ink, and Pearl, clasping and unclasping her fingers, a smile stuttering on and off her lips. Amethyst is on Pearl's other side, rolling her hands through the air – Drakken can't hear her, but he knows she, too, is whooping – and next to her is Steven, whose face is glowing brightly enough to put the sun out of a job, and next to _him_ , their fingers entwined, is Lapis.

Oh, dear God – _Lapis_.

She looks smaller than ever and weary from holding down that brute. But she is still Lapis, barefoot, filmy skirt flowing in the breeze, round inquisitive eyes with the little blue irises.

He hasn't let himself be inundated thus far with how much he missed her, how much more he was worried for her. Losing her after this brief a time might not have ripped out his heart, but it would've left a gap in there, however small, that no one else could quite fill.

Drakken's seen enough movies to know how it goes from here. He brings the hovercraft to a bumpy landing, trips over the side on his way out, and then he runs. Gravity seems to get lower, and he can feel his pulse pounding in his ears and only that, and he wonders if this is how Lapis feels when she flies, and decides it must be because his own feet are barely connecting to the ground, and he thinks there are instances where they're both in the air at the same time…

Lapis, though, stays still, like her bare feet are rooted to the spot. Her expression is flat – not hard, just blank, as though wiped away with a blackboard eraser. Behind her, Drakken is vacantly aware that the other Gems – the Crystal ones – are exchanging looks of concern, wondering – _Oh, no. Does_ she _have any idea what to do?_

But Drakken can't stop running, not until he absolutely has to, when to come any closer would mean trampling up onto Lapis's toes. Only then, with him exactly a quarter of an inch away, does Lapis leap up, quick as a hummingbird, and wisp her arms around his neck. What happens next is so automatic Drakken couldn't recreate it for an experiment.

All he knows is that _somehow_ he's nestled her in his own limbs and hoisted her up so their faces are level – she is heavier than one would expect from a fairy and lighter than one would expect from a stone. And she is a little chilly, lacking in body heat, though Drakken can feel the contents of his own chest liquefy. Her pixie chin is so near and waiting, just waiting, for its cue to spread into a matching smile.

The lump in his throat is more work to swallow than the gristle from last night's steak. Drakken's own grin expands until there's no more space for it and his eyes begin to water as a result.

"Hi," he greets her huskily.

Lapis's mouth wiggles. "Hi," she says.

Who gives way to muted, slightly delirious giggling first, Drakken couldn't tell you. Hers come in fits and bursts, an instrument stuck and stammering on the same key, and his wobble over every note within a human's range, and they both seem to slide directly up each other's nostrils.

Their fledging connection clips into place again, and it doesn't sever when Drakken sets her back down.

"What are they doing?" says a voice that could easily belong to the world's first talking mosquito. Drakken has to hold himself back from turning to view this marvel of modern science.

And then Garnet quiets it with a calm, dense, "Shhh. Not now, dear."

Lapis's head rotates about forty-five degrees, in angle measure, and her tired eyes cool about twenty degrees, in temperature. It is not a good look for her.

Drakken gives her hand a brief squeeze, gladly donating some warmth to her, and then skitters up to Steven. From this range, he can see a single, dark hair bristling right below the boy's bright pink cheek. How old _is_ this kid, anyway?

But that doesn't matter right now. Drakken tucks their hands together – Steven's are shorter but broader; he will be big someday, probably dwarfing Drakken. For now, though, he is still very much a kid, round and sticky and shining in a fashion that makes it impossible not to shine back.

"Thank you," Drakken says. "Thank you so much for looking out for her. I owe you many an ice cream sundae."

"Oh. Well, no prob, B –" Steven glances at Lapis, mashes his lips, and begins again. "I mean, happy to help. Happy for both of you."

The vividness of his grin, the compassionate tilt of his head – there can be no question of his sincerity.

Drakken, head swimming merrily, weaves his fingers through Lapis's once more. "So – can you show me around, Lapis?"

Lapis's face swivels back to meet his and settles back into that vulnerable openness that first drew his concern at the beach that day months ago. She unravels from the weave to waft her fingertips across his and gesture to the surrounding pasture with a sweep of her gossamer skirt. "Sure," she says.

Her speech seems looser now, less formal. It is her shoulders that are locking together, saturated with something too tightly burrowed under her skin for her to share yet.

But it doesn't come into play as Lapis leads him – with pride, Drakken would even venture to say – around what remains of the former farm. She shows him the water tower with the rust-eaten ladder she doesn't need to ascend to the top and study the sky that means so much to her. It is, Lapis tells him, where she goes to get away when the noise and the clashing presences of the Crystal Gems are too much for her.

She takes him into the barn itself, which holds in the heat comfortably now in the shrinking daylight hours and has more of a pleasantly mechanical scent than a musty animal one. Drakken watches her glide across the raw wood, and he cringes at the prospect of splinters lodging in her exposed toes, but Gems appear to be immune to such inconveniences. There is a pile of hay – a _bed_ , Drakken wants to call it, not even knowing if this is the correct term or not – arranged on the floor, and while several straw heaps at the bottom are tousled like tangled bedclothes, it still shows a near-perfect indentation of Lapis's body.

He shivers despite the conserved warmth.

Lapis doesn't seem to notice as she directs him to the barn's features: the old paint cans with molten orange and red and green forever encrusted on their lidless tops; a portrait that appears to be even older, depicting a man and woman whose genial look convinces Drakken they must be some relatives of Steven's; and the graying pickup truck, rear bumper teasing against the storybook doors, a mattress cushioning its cab. Drakken turns to Lapis, points at the mattress, and puckers his brow.

And at once, she is illuminated again, even under the coating of pain – she is the fine metal of the ladder, gleaming beneath the rust. "This is where Steven sleeps," Lapis says.

It is there, in her voice – that soft zeal with the firm roots – the same as Drakken heard on the phone when she returned his bold declaration. This is how it sounds to be loved by Lapis Lazuli.

Drakken gets the feeling it is not an honor afforded to many.

"Where would be a good place to put my sleeping bag?" Drakken asks after clearing away the speaking-lump that threatens to burst into a tidal wave. (He is proud of himself for coming up with an ocean metaphor.)

It is Lapis's turn to pucker her brows – the both of them. Drakken has always wondered how people with two of the things manage to maneuver them both in tandem. Such dexterity is beyond him.

"Your bag sleeps?" Lapis nods toward the navy-blue bag, with the stripes a shade still darker and the glow-in-the-dark zipper pull, and then shakes her head. "No, that doesn't make sense. Is it – is it a bag that puts you to sleep?"

That light wells up inside Drakken again – that urge to unpeel a gold star sticker to reward her well-thought-out guesses. "You've almost got it! Except it doesn't automatically put you to sleep; it just helps, same as a bed. You use one when there isn't a bed around. You just climb inside and zip it up and then hopefully manage to fall asleep."

"Oh." Lapis glances from him to his bag and back again, and he can almost hear her brain, whether she has a physical one or not, absorbing the information. "Well, how about up here on the shelf? It looks sturdy enough to hold you."

Drakken tests the shelf with his weight, and it doesn't crack or give, proving Lapis right. He spreads his sleeping bag out, claiming his turf, and then sighs with pure contentment as he glances around.

All is right with his world again.

Or – close enough.

As they leave the barn, Drakken almost trips over the elflike green person he noticed earlier. From close up, the vaguely triangular stone on her forehead clearly marks her as a Gem.

The green elf-Gem says enough of a "Hello" for Drakken to recognize the owner of the mosquito voice. Then the sound chokes off in her throat, everything on her face bulges, and a squeak slips out. "Oh my stars," she says. "Why are you blue? You can't be a Gem – but you're blue! Have I provoked _Blue_ Diamond's wrath, too? Is she sending an army for me? Are you just _pretending_ to be the friendly Lazuli? Is this the end?"

Wow. It's been a while since Drakken met someone who could flip as thoroughly inside out as he can.

"I _am_ the real Lapis Lazuli," Lapis says, "and I'm _not_ your friend." She levels her eyes at the other Gem, and Drakken can almost feel the friction blistering between them. " _He_ 's my friend. His name is Dr. Drakken, and he's a human. He had a lab accident, that's all."

Her tone is a flat slab of granite, foreign to Drakken. His gaze whips between her and the green Gem, who is now staring straight ahead, setting her angular jaw as though to ward off tears and it's still trembling somewhat.

Lapis curls frigid fingers around Drakken's bicep, meager though it may be, and leads him several yards away. Even the bangs leveling across her forehead seem sharper, harsher than before.

Drakken is confused – troubled, as well. He's never known Lapis to behave this way. "Is she okay?" he asks.

Lapis blinks at him. Her feathery shoulder blades rise and fall. "I guess you can go check," she says faintly. She _sounds_ like the same old Lapis, only with a bitter undercurrent.

Drakken gives her a pat and scuttles over to the green Gem, who's linked her wrists tightly behind her head and fallen halfway to the ground, where she nearly blends with the grass. "Errr… hello? I don't believe we've met," he tries. "Are you quite all right?"

The green Gem has fallen wordless, though not silent, a state Drakken understands quite well. Her irises – like Lapis, she lacks pupils – have dilated to the point where Drakken wonders if she sees anything at all.

An awkward kinship rumbles in Drakken's chest. He reaches a hand down to her. "You know, my therapist does excellent work," he offers her.

Her dilated irises snap up to his. "Your who does what?" she asks. Her words are so rushed, as if they have only been allotted two-and-a-half seconds to exit without paying surplus charge, that Drakken is amazed they don't collide with each other and fall away entirely.

They tell him she is far away from him, that anything from his world is pointless. Drakken makes no further attempt to reason with her; he instead gives her a small, nervous smile and resolves to check in on her mental state with someone else later, preferably the same someone else he asks about Jasper's fate.

It feels rather akin to betrayal to walk away from the poor girl, but her pain disperses in the breeze as soon as Drakken spies Lapis, with her arms folded around her middle and the remainder of her body swaying back and forth. If he had ever seen her eat anything more than a lick or two of ice cream, he would peg her as being about to vomit. For the first time, Drakken can see her thousands of years on her face – not in crow's-feet or sagging skin, but in the sullen steel grafted around her eye sockets.

He slips up and grabs her hand again, because she now seems in need of someone to anchor her to the ground. (Another good sea metaphor, Drakken notes.) "What's wrong, Lapis? I don't even know her – could you explain your hostility?"

Lapis turns to him, eyes aghast. "That's _Peridot_ ," she hisses.

"Peridot?" Drakken's esophagus locks around the name that doesn't fit, and he whips a glance back at the elf-Gem. Yes, now he recognizes the uniform and the visor, the distinctive triangular head. But devoid of the sneer, her lips appear knotted and fragile; and she's so _tiny_ , even shorter than Amethyst, and an entire head below Lapis, who's no NBA player herself, height-wise. "But she – hmmp hmmp – hmmp hmmp" – Drakken spreads his arms to full length and then squishes them to within inches of each other to indicate her change in size and then does it again.

Lapis doesn't smile the way she's supposed to. "She had limb enhancers."

Drakken snaps his fingers and looks down at his own runty legs. "Why did I never think of that?"

Silence from Lapis. Her body is a blade, set bitter against the sky and the sharp green of the grass, shrouded in fear. If only he could smooth it over, if only he could comfort her…

"So – Peridot came over from the dark side?" Drakken asks.

"According to Steven. He says she's a Crystal Gem now." Lapis's snort reminds Drakken of the sound of his poodle sneezing. Under other circumstances, he would chuckle.

But these are not "other" circumstances; they are critical. After all, Lapis has only just been rescued from dire straits – literally. _Is_ that literal? Are there straits in the ocean?

These are the real questions.

The look Lapis directs back at Peridot is not quite a glare – it is too heavy with worry. Drakken follows Lapis's gaze with his and finds the little green Gem beginning to uncurl from a quivering, conical shape. It would be hard to find anything frightening about her now.

Drakken leans over Lapis's elbow and purposefully perks his face. "Well, I don't think she could hurt you now even if she wanted to," he says. "I mean, she's a bigger wreck that you are, and you were in –"

 _No, no, no, Drakken! Do_ not _bring up what she's been through!_

Shego's smart-aleck tone in his head adds, _Not too likely she's forgotten yet._

"Okey-doke, aborting that," Drakken continues aloud. "Redirecting – umm – no one around here is going to _let_ her hurt you. Least of all me. Or Steven."

Lapis ducks her head and her bob slides into itself, concealing her face like a solar eclipse. "I know. I just don't get why you even _care_ about her." It comes out so tightly, as though she has sucked all the oxygen out from the words in order to constrict them further.

Anxiety nips at Drakken's stomach. He blinks twelve times in a row. "I guess it's because – I saw her having a panic attack," he says. "And that's almost exactly what it looks like when _I_ have a panic attack. There are these things my therapist calls 'triggers' that always send me into a frenzy like that, and I guess I felt kind of sorry for her, because it's a horrible experience. I just wanted to make sure she had _some_ body to help her – even if it probably can't be me."

At last, the corners of Lapis's mouth tweak upward. It's like seeing nothing but black marks in your bank account.

That's when Steven pokes his curly head out of the barn. He holds in one hand a videocassette whose peeling, lightly chipped case blasts Drakken straight back to the '90s. More importantly, when Lapis notices him, the opaque layer that descended over her at the sight of Peridot lifts, and she becomes the Lapis he knows again.

"Hey, Lapis. Are we still on for Steven-and-Lapis time?" Steven gives the video another wag. "Because I have _The Lion King_."

Peridot's green eyes droop, and Steven peers at her reassuringly. "It's okay. We have Steven-and-Peridot time later, remember?"

Lapis skips four steps toward Steven, and then stops to glance back up at Drakken as if she's being split down the middle. "Is it – is it okay if I go?" she asks.

Something about the way she looks at him – in trust, in eagerness, in the echoes of trauma – lifts one response, unchallenged, to his tongue:

"Do _you_ want to?"

Lapis nods, timid once more.

"Then go do it!" Drakken can't resist grinning at her, nudging her with his shoulder pad. "I'll entertain myself for an hour-and-a-half."

Lapis smiles back at him – a whole, complete smile – and she squeezes his wrist with her little fairy fingers and flits off after Steven, who's now asking her, "Oh, do you mind if Lion watches with us? I think he has a crush on Nala."

Ah, yes. The famed pink lion. Drakken makes a mental note to get a sample of that creature's fur to examine under a microscope before this visit ends.

It's only after they've both disappeared into the shadows of the barn that Drakken realizes he hasn't even considered _how_ he shall entertain himself, or even if he's capable of doing such a thing at all. A reflex simply kicked in based on Lapis's needs alone.

And that's not a reflex Dr. Drakken possesses in the normal order of things.

And right now, he knows, Shego would be saying, _Boy, are YOU in deep_.

He is also alone with one of the most beautiful days to have ever dawned. The few clouds are as clear and precise as the weathered palm-lines of the men who awarded Drakken his medal; the tender breeze sears into his memory just as intensely as the muggy one that first blew Shego onto his doorstep; the surprisingly soft sketches as Peridot draws in the dirt with a stick remind him that there are others he meant to speak to.

Drakken begins with Garnet; of all his new Gem friends, she seems the most stable. He finds her standing by herself – well, in the company of herself, at least – still not sure how the fusion thing works –and she's staring at the sky. She receives his "Hello" with a nod that implores him to cut right to the chase.

Nudging some wildflowers with his boot, Drakken is mildly intimidated by the sheer size of her, though she does not wear it with aggression like the Lorwardians or Jasper. "That green child –" he wafts an arm in Peridot's direction – "does she have a support group?" he asks.

"She's got us," is Garnet's reply.

There's no arguing with that voice. Or with those hands, gems embedded in each palm, apparently tailor-made for support. Drakken wants to inquire which of her components controls which side, and what their names are, and whether they both happen to be red naturally or have absorbed her signature color through the fusion process, but he narrows his list of questions down to just one more:

"Whatever became of Jasper, anyway?"

Garnet adjusts her sunglasses. "The earth opened up and swallowed her whole," she says.

Drakken sinks to his backside on that same earth. "Wow," he says. "I've never had one of my wishes come that specifically true before."

Garnet makes a small noise in the back of her throat. It could be anything from amusement to allergies – except, no, scratch that last one; Gems probably don't suffer from allergies –

The flapping of wings draws Drakken's attention up to a flock of geese honking down from overhead. They are already headed for warmer climates.

"That little gosling in the back is going to get lost somewhere between here and the Midwest," Garnet says out of nowhere. "His mother is going to have to backtrack twenty miles to retrieve him, and the leader of the flock will _not_ be happy."

She doesn't seem to be expecting an answer from Drakken, which is good because she just predicted the future of waterfowl and how does one respond to that and how does she know and _wow_. Mustering all his social graces, Drakken says, "Thanks, Garnet. Nice talking to you." She sends him off with the same nod she used to welcome him.

She is an unabashed oddity, Drakken decides on his hike back up the slight slope. He also decides he likes that.

Just past the barn – which is now leaking the first few strains of "I Just Can't Wait to be King –" is a new arrival, a van with so many different designs painted on it that it can hardly be called white anymore. Another new arrival, a man comfortably padded like an easy chair, is loading it up with boxes, bins, and a duffel bag or two. While Drakken has no ID for the man, seeing him is almost like a memory. His ruddy dome is bare all on top and a quarter of a way down the neck, but hanging down – and down – and down from there is…

"Oh, supreme!" Drakken exclaims. "My cousin would _love_ your mullet! How long has it been since you cut it? I've got a little baby one back here myself," he says, tugging his ponytail, "but I have to keep it trimmed because if it gets too long it itches and distracts me from my work."

The man breaks into a grin that Drakken _knows_ he's seen before. "Hey, thanks. Yeah, I've been workin' on it for awhile. Used to trim it every now and then, too, but – eh – I figure there's not gonna be _too_ much more where this came from anymore."

Drakken anticipates the moment where this man will register that he's speaking to someone whose skin is the same shade as the sky and marred by black perma-stitches. It never comes – no stares, no squirms – and so Drakken extends his hand. "Hi, I'm Dr. Drakken," he says – quite happily. "I'm a friend of Lapis's."

The man swallows Drakken's fingers with his pudgy paws. And right as Drakken recognizes the easygoing grip, the man says, "That's cool. I'm Greg Universe."

Of course. Of _course_.

"Oh, yes," Drakken says. "Steven's father." He tilts his head to the left. "How's your leg?"

Greg's lips form an _O_ , a soft _O_. "Yep, good as new," he says cheerily. "Probably better, in fact. Steven patched me right up."

For an instant, Drakken has the strange image of young Steven splinting his father's leg and setting the bone, a Boy Scout gone extreme, before it vanishes into the scene Lapis painted for him with her stories. "Ohhh, right. Because he has healing saliva."

Greg's "How'd ya know?" trickles toward an "Ohhhh" of its own, and Drakken knows he is watching the same scene: Steven licking his hand and pressing it to the life-stone on Lapis's back. Greg reaches into the front passenger seat of the van and comes back with a six-pack of soda. "Want a Fizzy Pop while we talk?" he asks.

Carbonated beverages have never been among Drakken's favorite things, but he's learned to recognize an extension of friendship when he sees one, and it thrills him. He graciously accepts, and with the enormous effort of an inexperienced soda consumer, pops the tab; Drakken is pleased to note that he does so without suffering a cut. He takes a small sip and pricks an ear toward the barn, now alive and overflowing with Steven's shrieks, so loud that Drakken can't distinguish which part of the movie they're at. If he were to take a guess, he'd say the elephant graveyard, because Steven is squealing with a child's delighted fear over something purely fictional.

"You made a really great kid," Drakken finally says.

"Well, thanks." Greg swigs from his own can and stuffs his other hand into his weather-beaten pockets. All of his movements have a quiet purpose about them that keep them from being lazy. "My genes can't take all the credit, though. His mother was an amazing woman."

Drakken nods, his mind encircling every fact he knows about Steven before cinching around the child's powers and his unusual living arrangement and the glow Lapis has described seeing under his T-shirt. "She was…a Gem?" he ventures, not entirely certain of why he said "was."

"Boy, was she ever," Greg murmurs. His voice is thick with something Drakken and Lapis haven't gotten to yet. His glance toward the horizon is bittersweet, and Drakken can't tell whether it's meant to invite further questions or bar them, and he isn't sure which one would be the bigger social goof-up if wrong, and before he can ponder through it to a hypothesis, Greg speaks again:

"So I hear you and Lapis are in a relationship now?"

Drakken swallows his mouthful of soda, harder than soda generally needs to be swallowed. His head bobs, automatically acknowledging the correctness of Greg's thesis, and _relationship_ is such an ambiguous term; he has a relationship with everyone from his mother to Kim Possible to Professor Dementor. From the sound of Greg's knowing warmth, however, Drakken knows he is talking about a capital-R Relationship, the kind that changes the status of that Villainster profile he used to have.

Squeezing the can so tightly the metal crunches even under his bony fingers, Drakken nods again, more deliberately. "Yes," he says. "Yes, I suppose we are."

There's no heavenly symphony when he says those words. And when Drakken gazes around again, none of the details have changed – he can say that without a doubt from a scientific perspective – yet there's something different about the landscape, as if Steven has come in and healed it all with a spit-shine.

"Good for you," Greg says. "Lapis and I – we got off on the wrong foot, but I'm sure she's really nice when she isn't fighting for her life."

There's not a single phony note in that sentence. Drakken's nod is heavier this time, burdened with his imaging of the insane fear that could drive a mild Gem like Lapis to such extremes. "She is," he must say right away, but then he remembers that narrow glare hollowing out Peridot, as if Lapis were unsure whether to malign her or simply dismiss her existence altogether, and fears that perhaps he hasn't spoken the truth.

"To me, at least," Drakken amends. "She still seems pretty bitter toward some others."

"Can hardly blame her." There's something sympathetic, something almost sad, in the hang of Greg's arms. "I mean, from what Steven tells me, she's been through a _lot_. You're doin' great to have her trust. You should be proud of yourself."

"I am," Drakken says. In fact, the feeling is bigger inside him than it probably should be. "And I know it would be healthier if she liked everybody, but I like feeling special now," he confesses.

Greg shrugs. "That's probably normal. Like Pearl used to remind me once a week – you're only human."

An already hefty cast of questions begins to multiply in Drakken's head, quicker than a pair of rabbits. How does he know Pearl exactly? Why did she feel the need to remind him of his species status? (It's a rather hard thing to forget.) Why does Drakken get the feeling there's a whole other story behind Greg's chuckle?

And then Greg is chuckling again and saying, "Well, I might be the only one around here who understands what it's like to date a Gem. If you ever need somebody to talk to…it can be a little different, especially when it comes to the, ya know, the physical side of things."

Drakken can feel the softening around his own cheekbones as he pokes at a bubble swelling across the surface of his soda, its convex surface refracting a rainbow, millimeters away from popping. "Lapis and I held hands once," he says, and there in his mind he can see his fingers, for once the bigger ten, folding around hers.

There's a soft grunt from Greg, who appears to be blushing under his sunburn. "Uh, yeah," he says, massaging the back of his neck as though the muscles are knotted. "We don't have to have this conversation just yet, then…"

It is Drakken's turn to shrug, because he honestly cannot fathom what it is they're not talking about, but since they're not talking about it, where's the harm? He sips more soda, the thin crust of frozen water at the base of the can even now melting into his palm.

"So what do you do?" Greg says, and from the easiness of it, Drakken decides he must be accustomed to holding the conversational steering wheel. "For a living, I mean?"

Drakken grins. "Well, I used to try and take over the world. But now I help save it. I work for Global Justice – it's all very hush-hush." He slips a finger to his lips to seal his pronouncement.

Greg's eyes widen above the rim of the can. "Wow. That's pretty dramatic. I bet running a carwash sounds kinda boring in comparison, huh?"

"Are you kidding?" Drakken rockets away from the van, his hands already flexing, testing the space they will need to reinforce his words. "Carwashes are fantastic! You get to use the wax applicators and the vacuum nozzle attachments and those brushy things that I forget the names of –"

"Brushes?" Greg says.

"Yes! Those!" Drakken thrusts a finger, throbbing with his rushing pulse, toward Greg. "And you get to just open up an absolute _deluge_ on people's cars and then blow-dry it off and – do you say 'Wax on, wax off,' during every wax job? Please say you do!"

Greg's mouth works from its gawking position into a grin of its own. "You know it."

"Who could resist, right?" Drakken's laughter rumbles his diaphragm on its way out. "Do you do hovercrafts, too? Because I could definitely bring min –"

That's when he feels a different vibration, a staccato shake against his hip, and Drakken rocks back against the van in alarm before realizing it is coming from the cell phone in his pocket. He extracts it, glances down at the screen, and nearly overturns his soda can when he reads the block letters printed on the screen.

 _MOTHER._

Drakken already has the phone most of the way to his ear by the time he turns to Greg and says, "Sorry. I've _got_ to take this. It's my mother."

Greg frames his good-natured face with both upturned hands. "Say no more."

It's only fair for Drakken to respond with a wave and a thumbs-up, even as he scrambles away from the van, to the shelter of a wide-leafed tree several yards away from the barn's back door and the sinister timbre of Scar's musical number. "Hello, Mother," he says, in the high, boyish pitch that tends to soothe her anxiety.

This time, however, it doesn't work. "Drew LIPSKY!" she hollers. "I went over to see you this afternoon, and you weren't home, and there was no note! I had to ask Shego, and she told me you'd left town – left the STATE – and didn't think to tell me!"

Drakken's stomach takes a sharp dip worthy of a roller coaster. "I'm sorry, Mother," he says, turning the placation up to full force. "Truly, I am. I was so busy running around and being worried that I forgot to tell you I was going back to Beach City for the weekend."

His last word cracks, and this does gentle Mother's ire. "Your summer vacation spot?" she says.

She remembers everything about him, and he remembers nothing about her, and sometimes the lack of balance can guilt Drakken without her aid. "Yes," he says. "See, I went to see a – um – I mean, I wanted to be with someone who needs –"

All the verbal roads he could travel chop off into sentence fragments. There is no path around the growing, breathing, stretching thing whose recent development has led him here.

Drakken's lungs need to be freshened for this; he sighs deeply. "Mother, I need to tell you something – and don't freak out, okay?"

Mother gasps, the opposite of a sigh, and her air seems to be lost, unable to find its way back out. In her defense, the last time he called and told her that, it was because he had irreversibly stained his body blue.

Drakken surges ahead, actually able to feel the stampeding of his heart – or is that the horde of wildebeest, about to upend Simba's life? "Mother, I met a girl. And I really like her – a lot."

What follows next necessitates pulling the phone away from his ear. Mother is once again screeching at the limits of the human hearing range – but experience tells Drakken that this time, the noises are joyous ones.

"Awwhhhh, DREWBIE! I'm so happy for you! Just think, after all these years…" Mother's voice, riddled with giggles, drops to her version of a whisper. "Who's the lucky girl?"

Drakken gropes for a phone cord to twirl and, finding none, fiddles instead with a hank of hair sweating itself free from his ponytail. "Lapis Lazuli," he says. "The one I had you make the teddy bear for."

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh." Every extra _h_ carries with it a quality of…knowing. Yes, _knowing_ again, and Drakken wonders if he were the last person on either of their planets to recognize this. "I see.

"Well, what's she like?" Mother says.

Like? What is Lapis _like_? She is like a friend, only deeper; like an ally, only closer; she is like a new slot in his heart with plenty of space to grow.

This speech manifests itself solely in pictures and ideas, nothing that will print legibly. Drakken tinkers with the format for a few seconds to no avail, and so decides to get the most important – or at least the most pressingly obvious – information out on the table:

"She's an alien."

Mother gasps, again, even more theatrically than before. "Not one of those nasty aliens who kidnapped you, Drewbie?"

Her worry draws back for him the feel of Warmonga's venomous breath on his neck. Drakken does a two-step to avoid it, fingers fidgeting at his waist.

"No, not one of the Lorwardians, Mother," Drakken says. They've actually since been blown up, and that is a topic Drakken doesn't wish to spend much time on. "She's a Gem. I mean, that's what she's really called. She's much smaller and much nicer. And she's blue, like me!"

Mother deserves to be acknowledged for recovering as quickly as she does. "All right. Well, I'd love to meet her."

It is, Drakken knows, his mother's way of saying, _You will bring her home if you value your life._

"We-ell, I can certainly invite her, Mother," Drakken hedges. His pulse is pounding; he isn't sure Lapis will want to come, and how will that look to Mother?

"And we can all have dinner together! That's perfect," Mother says, as if the event has been planned months in advance. "I can cook all her favorite foods. What does she like to eat?"

"Actually, her species doesn't need to eat. But she can shapeshift a digestive system if she wants to." Fearing this response may be unhelpful, Drakken adds, "She likes ice cream."

Drakken has never heard his mother speechless before.

At long last, he gets back, "What…does she _look_ like, Drewbie dear?"

Another first. Mother has never inquired that of the few friends he's had in his lifetime. But she speaks with hesitance – and also, probably, with the image of her only son returning home, escorting in some gelatinous mass of a creature with compound eyes like an insect's.

"She looks like a person – only she's blue, like me. Her skin is blue, her hair's blue – oh, and so are her eyes – which isn't strange at all, just a recessive gene – but she has the normal amount of, um, appendages and facial features. Well – she doesn't have ears, but they'd be covered by her hair anyway if she did, so it's not that noticeable." She can't see Drakken's nervous smile; he is only using it to form the proper tone.

He counts off the seconds during the pause. _One Mississippi, Two Mississippi_ – he's up to thirty-four by the time Mother says, "Would honey-glazed ham be okay?"

"That sounds _wonderful_ ," Drakken says – because how could anyone dislike his mother's honey-glazed ham? "And could you make the potato salad I like? With the chopped gherkins and everything?"

"Absolutely. And I'll be sure to have ice cream on hand. What flavor?"

"Vanilla."

"Vanilla it is, then." She babbles on for a while longer. Drakken can picture her face creasing in delight, the only wrinkles on her clay-smooth skin, born of a love that has ventured to the pit and back with him.

And he can still see it for quite some time after he's bid her good-bye and hung up and returned the phone to his pocket.

Drakken drops to his backside beside one of the fissures running parallel to the horizon. Though barely wide enough to see into, if you angle your head correctly, it's impossible to miss the expanse of geological discoveries in the making, layered like Mother's lasagna. It is so fascinating that Drakken stretches, on his belly, toward the crack. Moments later he remembers that Jasper was last seen toppling into one of these, that there's no guarantee she's gone, that she was, somehow, _created_ down here in all that heat and pressure, so it'd be silly to think it could do her any harm.

The potential for Jasper to arise from the Earth's mantle, snake her arms around his neck, and pull him down into a place where he can't survive is unappealing enough to get Drakken leaping from his sprawl and plastering himself to the barn's back wall. The planks are warm in the early evening cool that's begun to spread, soothingly so.

Drakken's ears, nearly canine in their sensitivity ever since his inadvertent rise to plant power, easily pick up the strains of the movie's soundtrack. But he can tell by the heaviness of the music that they're at the saddest scene ever, and he pushes past it to sounds beyond.

Near-whispers. Hushes, at least. If not a secretive meeting, one that isn't quite open to the general public, either.

A high, nervous voice that still retains too much beauty to belong to anyone but Pearl says, "…home to meet his _mother_. Are we really going to let her go home with him?"

The rush of her words reminds Drakken so much of Mother that it takes him longer than it should to realize the "him" Pearl refers to is Drakken himself.

"I mean, he _seems_ very nice," she continues, "but we don't really know anything about him."

Drakken waits for the pain to strike him, yet when it does, it is only a sliver of wood peeling loose from a plank to jab the flesh of his back. As he grunts and bats it away, a sour taste lingers briefly in Drakken's throat, then dries up and blows away. Pearl is trying to _protect_ Lapis. He cannot fault for her for that.

(Well, he _can_ , but far be it from him to do so!)

"Garnet, do you see any risks?" Pearl says.

The silence defers to Garnet, who apparently does have some type of psychic powers – they must be rare even among Gems, from the reverence Pearl employs when she asks. Garnet, for her part, does not make the same noises the quack fortune-tellers on television do. There is no pressing of fingers and murmuring of "Ommmmm," as if groaning the name of the derived unit of electrical resistance will make the future clear.

There is only clean, wise silence before she says, "I see risks in _every_ thing." Garnet's voice never rises, and yet its intensity hits Drakken like a sandblaster. "But there is no future where he harms her."

Drakken's entire body goes slack and melts down the side of the barn.

He really _has_ changed, then. Certainly he would never, ever hurt Lapis on purpose – but he never wanted to hurt Shego or his beloved mother, either, and there were occasions where in his carelessness he almost lost both of them.

It is a good thought to marinate in, and after retrieving his gift from the hovercraft Drakken does just that, sitting in the twilight and experiencing the rest of the movie secondhand. The credits roll before he knows it, and in only three minutes by his wristwatch, Steven and Lapis emerge from the barn, their hands connected, their eyes blinking to adjust to the last rays of sun. Steven gives Drakken a cheerful wave, high-fives Lapis, and then bounds off in the direction where Drakken remembers seeing Peridot last.

Lapis's shoulders bow slightly as she watches Steven disappear into the dusk, but she smiles upon turning around and finding Drakken waiting for her. She looks like a whole other person when she does that.

Drakken shifts his hands, clasped behind him, weighed down with his gift. "I have something for you," he says.

Lapis cringes, a cringe too quick to be a conscious one, and in a way indefinable, it seems to sink hooks straight into him. After what her life has consisted of, of course surprises would be a dicey prospect. But Drakken would never hurt her – Garnet herself classified it an impossibility; he would rather have a double-hangnail on every finger than hurt her.

Granted, he'd complain a lot about the hangnails, but it would still be better than hurting her.

"Don't worry. It's a _good_ something," Drakken reassures her. He pulls his hands from behind his back. "Behold! Your teddy bear!"

There is an evening birdcall, and then there is only a glorious moment as Lapis stares, glassy-eyed and opened-mouth, at his mother's handiwork.

"Look-look-look-look!" Drakken can't resist a full-sized grin as he turns the bear around to showcase her embroidered wings and her imitation gemstone, both of which Lapis absorbs with a velveteen expression. Drakken can feel it draping his own insides.

"Oh, Drakken," Lapis speaks his name as though it is an ancient incantation, "she's _beautiful_."

This is the point where he should liken the bear to her, but his throat is precariously knotted and might not survive the comparison.

Slowly, Lapis reaches out and fingers the hem of the bear's skirt. Her touch is light as an old-fashioned down pillow and delivered with the utmost care.

"Go on, take her," Drakken says. "She's yours."

Lapis cradles the bear gently, and as she scoops the bear into her arms, she is powerful and she is fragile; she is happy and she is sad; she is old and she is young; she is hopeful and she is cynical, and a whole host of other contradictions Drakken thought only existed in him.

"It's been so long since I had something of my own," Lapis says into the russet fur. She swings her face up to his, the twinkle bright under the dusty layers from months of having nothing to twinkle about. "Thank you."

"What are you going to name her?" Drakken manages to say.

Lapis traces the outline of the bear's gem. "Well, her gem is a lapis, so she should be a Lapis."

Drakken is disappointed and yet not surprised. Culture gap and all. "Well, she doesn't need to be," he says. "You can give her whatever name you want. Besides, that's plastic anyway –"

"Then her name should be Plastic," Lapis says.

Her voice is so decisive that it tears a laugh loose from Drakken. "Plastic Lazuli?"

"Yes." Lapis nods, and Drakken is thoroughly charmed by the absence of irony in her eyes.

And that is when the delayed impact of her earlier words crashes over him, like a sonic boom leftover by a plane traveling faster than the speed of sound. He frowns: " _A_ Lapis?"

If he were Lapis, his head would snap up in wild panic – but _she_ is Lapis, and she merely lowers hers, body seemingly shrinking to meet it, until her slightly lopsided part is visible. "Oh," she says, altogether too quietly. "I guess I forgot to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

Lapis sighs, in and out. "I'm not the first Gem to be Lapis Lazuli. And I won't be the last."

She glances at Drakken, as if she expects to find him devastated from war wounds. He isn't; the confusion in his head is too dense to allow him to be.

"You mean – you have clones?" Drakken asks. From a purely mad-scientist type of standpoint, he can see where an army of Lapises, with their flight capacity and command of water, would be advantageous, though if they all have Lapis's demeanor, they would surely needed to be molded and manipulated into soldiers.

Lapis shakes her head. "That's not even how Gems are made. Just – other Lapises."

"Oh, well, that's not really a big deal," Drakken says. "I mean, there are plenty of other people on Earth named Drew; it doesn't mean anything!"

He watches Lapis, waiting for her relief to sync with his. It never does. "No, you don't understand," she says. "We can all fly. We can all control water."

"Do you all _look_ the same?" Drakken says.

"Not identical. But similar." Lapis sort of squeaks, which would be hilarious if it weren't for the gravity of her words.

Drakken grips his temples. They are thumping as Lapis crosses her arms onto opposite shoulders, across the checkmark of her top's neckline, and as she stares down, he does too – down at those little feet that can flit so gracefully or follow so loyally or step forward so bravely.

How can a creature who speaks of such involved design be mass-produced?

Drakken isn't sure which variable to solve for first, so he latches on to a random one. "Doesn't it get confusing? You know, when someone yells 'Lapis!', how do you know if they're addressing you or not?"

"We have numbers."

The very word encroaches on Drakken like claustrophobia itself. " _Numbers_?" he sputters. "We had numbers in _prison_!

"Not to criticize the way your people do things," he adds hastily, after Lapis's face turns a shade darker.

"They aren't exactly numbers." Lapis takes on a tone of clarification. "We have classes and facets."

Right. Those terms bandied about when people discuss the stones too precious for Drakken to afford.

"Do you _like_ being called a facet?" he says.

Lapis's gaze wanders three degrees to the right. "No," she admits. "Almost as much as I don't like Peridot calling me 'Lazuli.'"

Drakken can understand that. He always hated being called "Lipsky," the way its very phonetics skewed people's lips into mockery.

"Then you'll always be Lapis to me," he says. "And if I ever meet another Lapis someday, I'll just call her…Lisa or something."

Lapis giggles, and Drakken wishes to lengthen it. He leans forward and uncurls her fingers with the same tenderness she used on the bear – Plastic – and he says, "Plus, if they're not your clones – then –"

He taps her fingerprints, and the smile that washes her cheeks makes something click into place inside Drakken. "Are they the same as before?" Lapis asks.

Drakken swallows. "Well, I didn't exactly have them memorized. I'm not _that_ much of a prince. But, scientifically speaking, there's no reason why they wouldn't be."

This appears to satisfy Lapis. Her stare fixes in place and yet moves far beyond him; she murmurs, "I kept trying to look at my fingerprints when I was her. But I couldn't remember why."

Her forehead lines with pain Drakken can't stand to see on her. He moves instinctively closer, flailing his hands at his sides. "Are – are you okay?" he asks.

Lapis breathes as if she is emerging from a wind tunnel and her eyes recover something she clearly feels compelled to maintain. "I'm fine," she says, and it's the first lie she's ever told him.

It seems strange, almost sadistic, to hope someone will cry. But the hurt is already there; all he wishes on her are the tears to release it.

A cool breeze rustles past them, snapping Steven's pink shirts and denim shorts on the clothesline, shaking the trees until they surrender their loose leaves, and then depositing one in Lapis's hand. Its rusty orange nearly engulfs the blue – robin's-egg is the closest crayon-color, Drakken decides – of her tiny palms.

Lapis grasps the thing by the stem and twirls it between her fingers like the ballerina in Mother's favorite music box. "Did you know that the leaves change color to mark the different seasons?" she says, sounding worshipful again.

Giddy warmth bubbles in Drakken's chest. "Yes!" he cries. "Isn't it marvelous?"

He is struck by the overwhelming urge to tickle her, and only when his hands are squashed into her armpits and she is giving him a look of complete bewilderment does it occur to him that Gems might not be ticklish in the traditional sense.

"What are you doing?" Lapis asks.

"I was attempting to tickle you," Drakken says. "It's when someone just kind of tiptoes their fingers across your skin and it makes you need to laugh really hard. I guess it doesn't work as well with you guys as with humans. Me, I'm super-ticklish…"

Lapis eyes him from behind her bangs. "You are?"

"Yes, especially the bottoms of my feet…" Drakken notices the slyness too late.

She grabs his boots, tosses them aside, and doesn't stop until he literally begs for air.

By the time the sun has disappeared completely and all the other stars have begun winking into visibility, Greg's finished loading the van and is ready to depart. He bids Drakken farewell – or at least "see you later" – before he leaves.

"I'll be back in the morning to pick up the Schtewball," Greg says, and somehow Drakken gathers he is referring to Steven. "He wanted to stay one last night here for old times' sake. That kid is all nostalgia." Greg shakes his head and chuckles the way, Drakken has observed from a distance, affectionate fathers do.

The heaviness of that thought doesn't last for long. Drakken busies himself spreading his sleeping bag on Lapis's recommended ledge, thrilled by the delightful unconventionality of sleeping in his clothes.

Before he climbs in and settles down for the night, he manages to think up a potential solution to the need to see what is in Lapis's heart when she thinks of the bear and not just what is necessitated by Gem naming standards. "Can you give her a _last_ name?" Drakken suggests to Lapis. "That way, she could have a name just for her – chosen especially by her loving owner."

Lapis's eyes sink into the possibility, as though she is being offered new powers that extend beyond her range. "I can think about it," she says.

This is good enough for Drakken. He falls back into his sleeping bag, reluctant, in spite of his sleepiness, to permit himself to drift away. His emotions are as exhausted as his esophageal muscles are after a good lengthy monologue, spent by the scope of the day, and that promises a nighttime spent running from monsters of his own design.

Drakken tells himself the truth constantly: the truth that he has made amends, that he has begun an entirely new life, that he is free and safe. It's like a song – not as catchy as "Quit Playing Games With My Head," perhaps, but beautiful in its own way, and yet it warps, becomes discordant without his conscious mind to conduct it, especially after a charged day like this one. His mind will be a Petri dish for nightmares.

 _And so it is tonight._

 _Drakken is not surprised to find himself running, running as quickly as his weak calves can carry him, away from the heat of his past sins and grievances. Some have snapping claws, others tweezerlike pincers, still others barrel-blasters for arms; all were created for maximum destruction. And if they catch up to him, they will do worse than destroy him – they will drag him back into that throbbing, itching, miserable life._

 _So he's running, straining –_ breathe, Drakken, breathe _– to stay ahead. It must be hours, it must be miles, plunging through a blackness purer and richer than oil, too black for anything to cast a shadow._

 _There is a shift then, in the air. Drakken's speed is not so much slowed as it is rendered utterly ineffectual – as if he has been running on a treadmill loop all along and only now noticed. A figure cuts out of the darkness and stands before him. Through the detached intuition of dreams, Drakken knows it's Warmonga even before her voice, deep as the next-to-last key on a piano, takes aim at him:_

 _"Blue Deceiver! See how your lies have brought ruin to the people you love! You have dishonored Lorwardian prophecy! Now you will watch your puny planet burn!"_

 _Something is wrong, very wrong, even in this unreality, even though all of her accusations are true._

 _It sends Drakken scrabbling backward, where he collides with a wall that wasn't there five seconds ago, it_ wasn't _! He's knocked to his backside, making Warmonga's figure appear even more Herculean as she looms before him._

 _Drakken doesn't feel anything, but he's aware of the pulsing in his neck, the near-penetration that then collapses in on itself. Something that should be working – isn't. An intangible panic surges in him._

 _"I defeated you!" he hollers up at her._

 _Warmonga's laugh is every bit as seismically-disruptive as her footsteps. "Do not be silly, Blue Deceiver! You never defeated Warmonga."_

 _Drakken scrambles to his feet and claws his way toward a patch of murky grayness that speaks of a light somewhere far away._

 _He never makes it that far. Warmonga grasps a handful of his ponytail and reels him in like a fish on a line._

 _Well, two can play at that game! Drakken thrusts his hand behind him and blindly latches onto her shaggy hair._

 _Shaggy?_

 _Drakken frowns. He remembers Warmonga's hair as silken and slippery from its fall across his face as she smooched his cheek._

 _With one last yank, Warmonga flops Drakken back toward her. "Blue Deceiver, don't you understand?" she jeers. "You never defeated me. You never did a thing to defeat me! And you never will!"_

 _Her voice has changed. While still low in pitch, its cannon-boom has been replaced by a rasp._

 _And since when does Warmonga refer to herself in the first person?_

 _Drakken already knows what he will see as he's spun around in her vise grip, knows he should not look, but he looks anyway. The sight is even more horrific than he feared._

 _Warmonga has become Jasper._

 _He doesn't know if he's more afraid of her than of Warmonga, but it is a different breed of fear entirely. Jasper grows to fills all the spaces, until there is nothing around Drakken that is not part of her. With one swipe of her mammoth, orange hand, she flicks him aside as though swatting a fly._

 _Drakken skids across invisible bricks. Gravel fills his mouth when he opens it to scream; he screams nevertheless, a loud, ripping scream that…._

…that sits him bolt upright.

Drakken scrapes at the surrounding dimness and tries to determine his coordinates. His lab coat adheres to his chest with sweat, and his legs are tangled in something that has yet to be identified. He continues screaming, for lack of any reason not to, and a woman's scream joins his – shrill, nasal, and endless. Drakken does not recognize it, and it makes him scream all the louder.

It's a wonder he hears, over the cacophony he can't make sense of, feathery footsteps approaching.

Lapis Lazuli runs in, waving an inactive garden hose the way a supervillain would brandish a ray gun. The near-comedy of the sight – the hose is both longer and thicker than the arms holding it – is countered by a fierceness that would give even the hardest villain pause.

A shaft of moonlight washes in then, and Drakken is able to figure out his location – lying on a ledge in the barn on the outskirts of Beach City – and the originator of the mosquito-cries – poor little Peridot, who is currently upside-down on the ceiling like a cat, clinging for dear life to a rafter. Once that is settled, there is nothing for him to do but drop his head back into his sleeping bag and howl with laughter, and to holler, "It's all right, Lapis!"

Lapis lowers the hose in one-inch increments.

Across the barn, Steven yawns and stretches. "You guys picked a strange time to have a scream-off," he murmurs. "Couldn't you at least have waited until morning?" He rubs one eye, sitting up on his mattress in the pickup.

When Eddy talked about "the bed of a truck," Drakken's pretty sure this wasn't what he was referencing; and suddenly everything is hilarious. Drakken laughs into his sleeves until he's set his entire body quaking.

"That thing that isn't a Gem started it!" Peridot protests.

Lapis raises the hose again threateningly. "I'll still spray you."

Her words are determined, miniature spatters of rain that soften into a light drizzle when she turns to Steven. "Sorry we woke you up," Lapis says.

"Oh, that's all right," Steven says. True to his youth, his face is already bright with no traces of drowsiness. "Garnet!" he calls toward the barn door. "We need a Peri-extraction!"

Lapis gives up a smile and turns to leave. All Drakken can see as the moonbeam wanes away is the teardrop-shaped stone, set vulnerably between her shoulders, and he has to be with her.

"Lapis, wait up!" Drakken calls. He disentangles his boots from his sleeping bag, stumbling twice, and trots to catch up with her before she leaves the barn. She stops in the doorway, turns around, and without a backward glance curls her marvelous chilly fingers around his.

Happy things take place in Drakken's insides.

He has felt these things before - heart pumping yet light, thoughts leafy and clear in his head, warm urgency up and down his spine - and there is only a change that is so slight that it wouldn't be noticed unless taken out and examined under a microscope. The differentness of it is almost too small to be felt.

If this is love, Drakken decides, he's a big fan.

He follows Lapis outside, behind the barn to a sprawl of rolling grass, and lies down on the ground, which is just chilled enough to refresh his sweating back. Lapis stretches out beside him, and there is nothing uncomfortable about their silence. Drakken's always been tangle-tongued and tangle-limbed around the females he's liked, but it's well-nigh impossible to feel _too_ self-conscious around Lapis. She's straight-bodied the way he is, as much a girl-woman as he is a boy-man.

A gentle gust slaps a few willowy weeds against each other. The night is still, save for Garnet's centered voice as – Drakken presumes – she coaxes Peridot off the ceiling.

"Lovely night," he says.

Lapis's skin twitches ever so slightly, as if something has tunneled in beneath it and saddened her. "Yes. For Earth."

Her tone does not carry an insult. "You really miss your home, don't you?" Drakken says, squirming to one side to see her better.

As soon as the words have left his lips, Drakken knows he might as well have asked, "Your skin really is blue, isn't it?" _Doy_ , as Shego would say.

Lapis nods. Her longing is big, maybe larger than her – and as alien to him as her liquid wings.

"See, I've never really experienced that myself," Drakken explains. "When you're a supervillain, you have a bunch of different lairs, and you need to be ready to hop from one to another just like –" he attempts to snap his fingers, fails, and instead says, "at a moment's notice, if the authorities show up or you explode your own living quarters or…something. So I never got too attached to any one place."

A brief sound comes out of Lapis, something ironic and wistful. "You're lucky, then."

Drakken frowns; his life has not been one of good fortune until these last four months or so. "Maybe I was," he says. "Or maybe you were."

Lapis looks at him as if he has just said something worthy of the radio talk-show doctor he long pretended to be. There is surprise in her expression, but none of the disbelief that would assume such wisdom to be out of his reach. She rolls herself onto her left elbow (Drakken wonders, oddly, if Gems can be left- and right-handed) and says, "So – why were you screaming in the barn? Did Peridot try something?"

"No, no, Peridot did nothing!" Drakken is prompt to answer. "When I woke up screaming, it must have freaked her out, and she started screaming, too. That's all."

"Oh. Okay." Lapis's face loosens somewhat. "Why did you wake up screaming?"

"I had a bad dream."

Unlike his nosy mother, she does not press for further information. This is good, because Drakken has no desire to tell her that Jasper was a key player and watch the small features tighten again. Lapis only says, "I know about those now."

Drakken's mind slips back to the tousled pile of hay in the barn. Undoubtedly she does – between Jasper and the horror she once described so well for him:

She is standing in a pasture that has become a battlefield seemingly overnight, thick with Gems in all directions – Homeworld or Crystal; it hardly mattered – her sky turned bewildering, too shrouded in smoke to navigate. But the battle appears to be winding down, Homeworld Gems stumbling and shouldering in their haste to retreat. There is, perhaps, an end in sight.

And then, out of nowhere, one enormous brown Gem swivels around to Lapis. She has wild, multicolored ropes of hair, framing a killing grin. It is the first time Lapis will look at another uncorrupted Gem – though what _corrupted_ means, Drakken is still unsure – and see evil. Her arm is grabbed in a grip strong enough to anchor her to the ground, wings useless; a giant fist rears back and then everything goes black.

Everything goes black for him, too, speckles at the edges of his vision, coating his muscles in lactic acid. He thinks how all it took to mortally wound her was a punch; how no jury would ever convict him; how he would have protected her, but that was an eternity before he was born.

Drakken yanks himself back to reality, deciding now is as good a time as any – a better time, in fact, than many – to put forth his invitation. "Speaking of homes," he begins, "would you like to come visit my home for a while? My mother's very insistent on all of us eating dinner together. She's been waiting a long time for me to…meet a girl."

Lapis leans over him, curiosity admirably bright in her eyes. "Are we endangered?"

Drakken turns his head so that he guffaws into the blades of grass, autumnal soft before their winter browning, and then it is so much easier to stay facing them while he explains. "No, I mean, for me to…to fall in love."

The words somersault clumsily out, and Drakken can feel the patches of embarrassment coloring his cheeks.

Lapis has two darker blue smears on either side of her own nose, but she smiles, one petite corner at a time. "How do you know you're in love with me?" she says. "What does it feel like?"

The question is quiet, even by Lapis's standards, and yet it hacks into Drakken's brain, disabling his speech software as well as his vocabulary. She may have finally asked something he doesn't have an answer to.

The first time he saw her, he noted only that she was small and wet and alone, and he wanted to make sure she had someplace safe to go. It is hard, it is perhaps impossible, to sort out what was there and what wasn't then; what was and what wasn't when they exchanged backstories; what was and what wasn't when she danced on the beach and enchanted him so; what was and what wasn't when he found out she was in mortal danger at the bottom of the sea.

Drakken's thoughts stagger through that collection until they finally land on one that offers itself up for support: his knee-jerk response to Lapis asking if she could watch the movie with Steven. Others follow, emboldened now with the presence of a leader – how it does not occur to him to be offended when she speaks of his planet with less than fondness; how, as much as he fears pain and toil, the thought of Lapis suffering is even more frightening to him.

Lapis waits on the fringe of his vision. The smile is still there, though it perches restlessly, as though it must be ready to pack up and flee anytime.

"It's not so much what I feel," Drakken says. "I mean, I definitely have the heart palpitations and the fluttery stomach and all, but I've had those before. I know I'm in love because – because whenever I think about you, almost always my first thought is how much I want you to be happy or how badly I want you to be safe. That goes against my whole mindset - so it makes me sit up and take notice!"

Drakken releases the air from his tight-corded lungs and dares a full glance at Lapis. He is rewarded when her own miniature generator appears to switch on inside of her, setting her aglow.

"Well," she says, "thank you for not flirting with me." Her voice is wry.

Drakken isn't sure which part of that demands first response – that someone is grateful for his lackluster wooing skills, or how she even knows what flirting _is_ to start with – and so he just laughs, one short laugh so as not to hurt Lapis's feelings. "I never learned how to flirt," he says. "Or parallel park."

Lapis nods mutely. She has the simplest of faces, and yet the play of moonlight and emotions across it is, in its own way, just as fascinating as any specimen he ever studied under a microscope.

"I'd love to meet your mother," Lapis finally says. "I just hope she'll like me."

She is far too modest. This is a problem Drakken's never had.

He snorts, a noise something less than gentlemanly. "How could anyone not like you?"

Lapis's gaze stops probing and drops to her folded legs. "I'm not always as nice as I am with you," she says. "When I get scared, and I'm with people I can't trust – well, basically, I have two kinds of scared. One kind makes me really nice, and the other one makes me really mean." She lifts her head, straining as if it weighs twelve tons. "That probably doesn't make any sense."

Drakken ponders that. "Scientifically speaking, it shouldn't. But I know exactly what you mean."

The relief that engulfs Lapis is almost strong enough to touch, but there is still that pocket of defeat holding her down, Drakken can tell. He dials down to a whisper and says, "Well, did you ever mind-control anyone just because they had a smart mouth?"

"No."

"Then you're still nicer than me," Drakken declares.

Lapis threads her fingers through the grass-blades, as though their texture is a minor miracle to her. "How can a mouth be smart?"

"Oh!" Drakken grins. "That's a figure of speech. It just means she was really sassy, talked back a lot, you understand."

Another nod; she's heard that story.

"Well, next time your friend starts talking backward," Lapis says, "you can just tell her…" Rather than finishing, she raises a palm and blows a raspberry onto it, startling another chortle from Drakken.

"What does that _mean_?" he asks.

One side of Lapis's mouth tweaks upward again, restoring the playful look from the days prior to Malachite. "I'm not sure, exactly. Steven taught it to me."

The twinkle in her eye might be mischief now, but it is something alive and undefeated, and therefore, beautiful. Drakken falls back against his bed of grass and heaves a sigh, the deep kind wrought by satisfaction.

"Besides," he says, "as long as you're nice to _me_ , you could probably be an ax murderer and my mother would still love you."

Lapis frowns. "How do you murder an ax?"

The question is so startling from her that Drakken can only blink, rapidly, until she multiples in his vision.

Lapis must misinterpret his expression, because her hands rise in the gesture of surrender his darker nature used to crave. "I'm not planning to," she says. "I was just curious."

Drakken is so tired that all he can do is laugh – and hope sleepily that Lapis isn't offended.

She doesn't seem to be. She just stares like a silent question mark until Drakken manages to explain, "In that case, the ax would be the _weapon_ , not the victim."

He has never realized what a hideous concept that is until he watches it pass through Lapis and take her aback. Finally, to Drakken's great relief and with much blinking of her own, she changes the topic. "So, you really think your mother will like me?"

Drakken nods with all the enthusiasm he can summon at one in the morning – which, not to brag or anything, still outnumbers most people's midday levels. "Yes, yes, yes! I do."

"All right," Lapis says. "Then I'll come."

A victorious "YESSSSS!" rockets off Drakken's insides, waning into the "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" that squeezes eventually out between his lips.

Lapis's giggle is rich and grounded: inanity and frivolousness have no place in her life anymore, if indeed they ever did. "You're welcome."

In that moment that she still kneels, hands resting on the grass so that blades poke between her knuckles, she is a Precious Moments figurine topped with Raggedy Ann hair; all he wants is to protect her as she has protected Steven. Yet his body is bound and determined to stitch back together the interruption in the night's slumber. Drakken pictures the gap closing in long, expert knitting strokes – like his mother's – and nestles back into the downy grass, letting out a yawn. "Is it all right if I go back to sleep?" he says.

Lapis squints at him. "Well, there are three other beings around here who don't need to sleep at all." The squint comes open and rolls. "Four if you count Peridot."

"Five if you count Garnet being a fusion," Drakken chimes in. "But – do you trust them?"

Lapis shrugs. "I trust that they love Steven. That means they probably wouldn't do anything to me."

It's Drakken's turn to squint at her. There is fear in her eyes, but just in a few small streaks, and her chin is held with such determination, as though she can will life's hills and valleys into behaving themselves. Drakken has tried that before himself, with absolutely no success. But perhaps it is different for Gems.

He doubts it, though; only sheer fatigue prevents him from arguing.

Lapis picks up on this, too. She wiggles, feet tucking up under the hem of her skirt, and adds, "And if anybody does do anything, I can always just scream and wake you up."

"Ah. Yes, that'll work splendidly. Good plan," Drakken says.

He locks his arms behind his head and throws one last glance at Lapis as he lies flat again. She parses the sky as one would page through their high school yearbook, remembering old friends, acquaintances, enemies. Grief and happiness huddle together in the sigh she releases before the wind carries it off.

"Look," she says. "Up there."

Drakken instinctively follows the point of her finger to an orb of light amid an array of other givers and reflectors. Their arrangement on the purple-black expanse appears as haphazard as Drakken's sock drawer, and still somehow manages to be breathtaking in its beauty.

"That's Homeworld," Lapis says.

"It's pretty," Drakken says. It seems more an automation than a fitting response, and he takes another, more nuanced, look at it. "I mean, it's a speck. But it's a pretty speck."

Lapis sighs again. "I never thought I'd be fighting against it."

The hooks burrow into Drakken once more.

"You're not fighting against _it_. You're fighting against the forces that have corrupted it." Drakken hears the volume of his voice careen upward, even as his eyelids descend with the irregular flutters of the lightning bugs landing on wildflowers nearby. "You remember the Lorwardians?"

Lapis nods, and Drakken continues, "It turns out the leaders were tyrants on their planet, as well. There were plenty of other Lorwardians who thought they were wrong but were too afraid to challenge them. When we defeated them" – and they are more than defeated, and that condenses in his throat, because he cannot add to the luggage Lapis is already carrying around – "we became heroes on _both_ planets.

"You will be, too," he finishes.

The silence is enraptured. Right as his eyes seal off the night, Drakken thinks he feels Lapis lean over him and gently kiss his cheek.

But it may be just a dream.


	12. Healing

**~I live!**

 **Switching back to Lapis's POV here.**

 **Mega-thanks for all the reviews, faves, and follows. I know I've said I'm amazed before, but just - wow. You guys rock.~**

You watch as Dr. Drakken's eyes fall shut and his body goes limp.

For a moment, you are taken aback, and you pad on your palms over to study him. He does not appear to be in pain – you have seen how his face crumbles at even the slightest of pains: the banging of a toe, the bite of some small Earth insect. This expression looks peaceful, and yet you have never seen him so still.

It is then that the white Pearl bustles by, and you reach up and tug on her hem. She has much experience with humans and, even more so than most Pearls, she loves to be helpful.

She turns and looks straight at you, which sends ripples across your confidence. You have never seen direct eye contact on a Pearl before.

"He's just asleep, right?" you say, pointing to Drakken.

There is a softening around all of the Pearl's piercing angles. "Oh, yes. This is normal," she says soothingly. "It's always a little alarming to see them fall asleep the first few times, but he is perfectly fine, I assure you."

You giggle – an inexperienced, halting sound – and say, "Thank you." A "well done!" and a brisk clap would complete the dismissal of a Pearl, yet for some reason you are not compelled to add these.

Instead, you pull your knees up close enough to rest your chin on them and glance once more at the inactive Drakken. How young he is – some Gems don't even make it off-planet in their first forty-two years – and he looks even younger in his sleep; he could be Steven's age. His pliable cheeks have pillowed up around his eyes, erasing the dark circles, and every now and again his lips pucker or his small nose with its seashell-like curl twitches.

It is a face that speaks more of softness than power. But after what Jasper did to you - and what you did to her in return - you're taking a break from power, too.

Warmth rests between your shoulders. "He's kind of cute when he sleeps," you say.

Pearl's smile is understanding, her "Mmm-hmm" filled with wisdom.

She turns and glides away on lissome legs, the tallest of the grasses only whispering around her ankles. It dims the reflection, already yellowing and curling with age, of her attacking Blue Diamond's base, hacking away at Quartz guards with a sword in either hand.

Tarnished or not, it is still not an image you treasure. You shiver and face forward again, bringing your head down into your usual slouch. After so many centuries spent in cramped, silver-rimmed captivity, stretching out feels almost as forbidden as needless fusion. Were Steven here, his childish courage would equip you to laugh at any limits. But he, too, sleeps, and so you only manage to lift your gaze to the darkened sky.

Distant stars glitter. Beyond that, you can see the swirl of another solar system. Beyond that is the luminescent form of your Homeworld, so close you can see what stage of orbit it is in, but just out of your reach.

Just like it was when…

Darkness squeezes in on you.

There is no metal trapping you on any side; you _know_ this, and yet the fear is identical. When you turn your head, close your eyes, you feel the roiling current in the hollows of your manifested form – lapping, bullying, always retreating right before it would hit you. You remember the sensation of chains swallowing your wrists. You recall breathing breaths that were not yours. So much confusion, so much bitterness…

You were furious when you dragged Jasper, yourself, and the new monstrosity the two of you created down to the ocean floor and pinned them there, and that made your powers even more potent than usual. Jasper could take your freedom, your dignity, or your very _life_ – but she could not take your friend, could not take the one Gem who shows the promise of carrying on everything you once loved about your people.

Jasper herself was all flails and screams and threats, empty ones now. She projected angry, vengeful thoughts that stunned you with their intensity. You could hold her down; it required fierce concentration and a gritty feeling that scraped at your consciousness, but you would never let go, not ever.

Then came the first falling. The angry, vengeful thoughts slid into you and for a scarlet instant, they began to make perfect _sense_. You could hear Jasper's laughter rasping in triumph, and you jerked her back down.

It didn't stop her. Or you – or what you were becoming. As if Jasper had spit Centipeedle acid on you, she began to bleed through you and eat away at your insides.

You, the Gem whose step had never before faltered in water, were drowning.

The ocean was scarcely recognizable. Dark. Cruel. Absent of any of the sea creatures whom you can relate to, such as the octopus – smarter than it looks; halfway playful, halfway shy; temperamental only when cornered, and even then its preferred defense is to blind its enemies with ink and slip away.

No, all the creatures at the bottom of the ocean are more like Jasper – ready to bite and rip for any scrap of food, sharp-toothed, bloodthirsty, and so accustomed to it they have probably never known any other way to live.

How easily one becomes the other, though.

Your fingers clench in the soil, so tightly that you rip up several blades of grass. The edges of you lose feeling and begin to float. In a matter of moments, you know, you will be numb save for the cold terror in your gem, every body part quivering.

It is Dr. Drakken's soft breath against your hand that brings you back. You cannot be at the bottom of the ocean; he would not be breathing if you were; humans cannot breathe underwater. And you cannot be stuck in the mirror, either, because even now the energy of the universe flows into you.

You are safe. You are safe.

The mantra repeats in your head as you struggle to believe it. You lie back down and inch over onto one side, and you collide with something softly hairy.

Plastic Lazuli.

The panic has squeezed off nearly all feeling by now; your thoughts will be next. Before that can happen, you reach down and scoop Plastic up and wrap your arms around her.

And Dr. Drakken is right: it feels good.

Plastic's weight gives perfectly under your clutch, and her supple, squishing arms rest with the ultimate gentleness on your forearms. She smells of things you cannot identify, perhaps fabrics, perhaps different species of the cleaners Pearl loves so. Her sweet bear head meets your skin and calms its rigid bumps.

You can feel your feet again.

Still unsteady, you pull Plastic into your lap and bury your nose in the pleasant new scent until you no longer smell rotting fish and sharp saltwater and Jasper's anger. The stars do not console, but at least they do not mock you.

From the farthest reaches of your memory wafts an ancient Homeworld cadence, which circulates over and over until you can recall the words that have always brought you comfort.

 _Welcome to your life, dear friend_

 _Welcome to your home_

 _Your future's bright; stumble you might_

 _But you'll never be alone_

 _The stars will keep you safe, dear friend_

 _Their light's far more than warmth_

 _Let them guide your way; watch them dance and play_

 _Constantly being reborn_

 _We are one, born from the ground_

 _Eternal unity_

 _Our reach extends, horizon without end_

 _Far beyond our galaxy_

 _So do not fear, my newly made_

 _There is no need to cry_

 _We must move ahead, but wherever we tread_

 _You'll not be left behind_

 _Drink the stardust now, dear friend_

 _Wrap our sun around your skin_

 _There's a whole new sky inside your eyes_

 _You have so much to give_

 _Welcome to your life, dear friend_

 _Welcome to your home_

 _Your future's bright; stumble you might_

 _But you'll never be alone_

It is the song that was once sung to you, newly emergent, when you might have actually been the innocent, delicate creature whom Dr. Drakken clearly sees you as. It was sung to all the emerging Gems for thousands of years.

Strangely, the next place at which your mind chooses to dock is Peridot. She never would have heard that song; by the time she was made, after the War, production had already increased to the point where a welcoming ceremony was impractical.

Or would they have bothered with it anyway, for a Peridot?

No wonder she was so cold, knowing neither love nor hate. No wonder she's rampaging like a corrupted lunatic over her own-newly discovered emotions.

From a scientific perspective, as Drakken would say, it is probably a good thing that Peridot has Steven to show her the way. But there is something in you, something hard and deep, that yearns to be Steven's only special friend.

For the time being, though, you are happy to pity Peridot. It keeps you from pitying yourself.

You glance at Dr. Drakken again. Occasionally, small snorts of breath will catch in his throat and you watch him closely to ascertain they will surface again. They always do, and you catch yourself on the edge of a smile. You have missed him: his ramblings about science, his pronounced hand gestures, his gawky kindness. The kindness that is so easy to return.

With Peridot around, this is a very important thing.

 _"Lapis…why are you being so mean to Peridot?"_

Those words, from your Steven, broke over you like a tidal wave out of your control. _Mean_ is one of the few things you have never been accused of being. And while his voice was confused, not accusatory, you can still see yourself shrinking in his esteem.

And Peridot perhaps by comparison rising?

You tighten your arms around Plastic until the hem of her skirt presses against your wrists and grounds you in the present. The sky lures your gaze back with its depth. If Drakken is right, there is a higher authority than the Diamonds. You are not sure if you believe that, but you like the idea of them answering to someone, someday.

 _Drink the stardust now, dear friend…_

You think of the kindness, still there in Steven's eyes as you dropped the hose and left the barn, still glad – even after all the consequences – that he freed you. Even as you sway back and forth, fists clutched, Dr. Drakken's exhalations across your fingers feel like a promise that this planet will face the sun again.

And by the time it does, you have decided on a last name for your teddy bear.

It is then, also, that Steven wakes and emerges from the barn, even pinker than usual, his hair a scrambled mass of fuzz, his eyes behind a type of mist, like the one rising from the earth, clouds on the ground. One look at him banishes all of your unspent anger, anger that has no place in your new surroundings. Only one other Gem can understand what it is to experience that level of anger.

How can you miss someone you never wish to see again?

Steven yawns and greets each of his caretakers in turn. "Good morning, Garnet. Good morning, Amethyst. Good morning, Pearl. Good morning, L –" And with that, the clouds disperse, and he smiles to match the dawn. "Good morning, Lapis! It really is you! I thought I just had a really good dream that we saved you!"

This is welcome, if undeserved, and you return his smile weightlessly. "Hey, Steven."

Steven scrambles over and settles himself, cross-legged, next to you. "I like your bear," he says. "Where'd you get her?"

He and Drakken border you on two sides, and you are touched by a sensation you have never felt on the soils of Earth – one fleeting but urgent. You point the bear's arms toward Drakken. "His mother made her for me," you say.

Steven's face glows still brighter. "Oo-whoa," he breathes. "That's sooo nice."

"It really is." You clasp Plastic to the narrow strip of exposed skin between your top and skirt, wanting to retain the feeling within – the feeling of being, somehow, complete. "Everyone's being so kind, and I really don't –"

And you stop. You cannot say the rest, not to Steven, not with his glow at the prospect of lavishing still more kindness on you.

"Does she have a name yet?" Steven asks.

"Her name is Plastic Lazuli, because she has a lapis gem, but it's plastic," you explain, rotating the bear to show Steven the stone in question. "And her last name is…Hope."

In your mind, Jasper recoils from the word as if it is a corruption bomb, twisting and writhing on the ground, unable to overcome it.

Steven throws his arms in the air. "That's a great name!" he says.

"Thank you," you say. You pause a moment to wade in his compliment before adding, "Steven…can I ask you a question? It's about Dr. Drakken."

"Yes, of course I'll be the ring bearer at your wedding!" Steven cries, leaping to his feet as though he has been lashed with Amethyst's whip.

You blink. "What's a wedding?"

"Oh." Steven's cheeks turn yet another shade of pink as he lowers himself back down. "I guess I jumped the gun a little there. Umm – what's your question?"

You find yourself uncoiling, find yourself stretching one leg in Drakken's direction. "He invited me to come and visit his town for awhile. And I really want to go." You prop up on one elbow to gaze down at Steven. "Would it be all right if I did?"

Steven squints at you, deep in thought, and not for the first time you can almost see a wobbling rope bridge connecting your gems. "Welllll," he says, "I know you were having some trouble being around Peridot and the others. It might be good to go to a place where you can be the only Gem for a while.

"As long as you promise to come back," he finishes. His forehead folds so far down over his eyes; he is a portrait of Drakken, in a pink pigment rather than blue, with the crack-scar erased along with any likelihood that he could do harm to anyone.

It takes all your willpower not to laugh – to pretend, rather, to be gravely considering that, tapping one finger against your chin, saying, "Hmmmm….let me think about that." At Steven's first symptom of horror, you burst out, "Of _course_!" and reach into the crevices beneath his arms to practice more of the – _tickling_ , Dr. Drakken called it when he introduced it to you.

Steven does not disappoint. He shrieks in untarnished happiness, and his giggles drown out the snarls still alive through your head.

A gust of wind zips through the trees with a high whistle like a comet, mingling with Steven's low-pitched laughter: together they fill you, pressing against you until you are reminded of those "lizard" animals Drakken told you about who can grow too big for their skins. You do feel as though the skin graded onto your physical form might burst at the seams. It is so close to pain, yet so sweetly different.

Dr. Drakken awakens then, with a yawn, clenching and unclenching his entire body. His eyes are faraway, too, the black parts not quite centered. When they do come together in a focus – on you – he breaks into a sloppy smile. The shine across his face cannot possibly be deeper than the abyss where you spent the past few Earth-months, but it seems it.

He does not appear to mind you being the first thing he sees.

"Good morning, Lapis," he says after a few more hazed seconds. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," you say automatically. "Did – did you have any more bad dreams?"

Drakken shakes his head. "Not that I remember, anyway."

Your experience with dreams, torturous as it was, was also brief. You do not know how dreams work and so can't take the credit for crouching over him all night, keeping the bad ones at bay; you feel a wave of pride anyway.

Drakken reaches over and lightly squeezes your hand. It is slight and blue and unshared by anyone else.

A mixture of relief and loneliness pulsates across your entire back.

Steven and Drakken rise and eat _cereal_ – small grain flakes, in colors you never knew they could be, drenched in cow's milk. Drakken offers you a bite, which you agreeably accept and stick between your lips. The taste is profoundly sweet, on the verge of excessive without actually meeting it.

You crunch the cereal between your teeth, using them for the first time in months, and that's when you see Jasper's: white and pointed as the salt cliffs on one of the Kindergarten Bases whose designation you can't remember, gnashing in your face. Threatening, demanding, coercing. Before you can shapeshift your taste buds away, your mouth fills with a flavor similar to low tide.

There is a way to expel food from your mouth, but you can't recall it now. You simply swallow, hard, and you are sure you can hear it land with a hollow splash in your manifested stomach.

"Are you okay?" Steven and Drakken ask together, Drakken a beat behind so that his words are an imperfect echo of Steven's. They wear identical expressions of concern. They have both already spent far too much time worrying about you. It is not their fault this still haunts you.

 _Your weakness is no one's responsibility but your own, Lapis_ , the memory of Blue Diamond's voice chides you.

You nod. "I'm fine."

"I've got a great idea!" Steven says when the cereal has been finished and Drakken is licking the last few drops from a bowl – is eating such a messy business for _all_ humans, you wonder? "We should teach Lapis how to play tag!"

Drakken's tied-back bramble of hair lifts as though in an updraft. "Yes, that'd be wonderful!"

"What's tag?" you ask. It does not _sound_ frightening, especially not from these two.

"It's a really cool Earth game!" Steven says. His arms flap like two flags in the breeze. "You're running away from someone called It, who's trying to tag you!"

"'Tag' you?" you say. You remember walking planets soon to be colonized, reading the identifiers stuck to selected specimens, though you doubt this is what Steven is referencing. That was no game.

"Touch you with their hand and say, 'Tag! You're It!' Then _you_ have to be It," Drakken says.

"What's 'It'?" you say.

"It's just what they call the person who has to chase the others," Steven says, his voice giddy but patient. "Then when you touch somebody else, you say, 'Tag! You're it!' and then they have to chase you. Etcetera, etcetera."

"Oh." You nod at Steven. You consider asking what, exactly, is the point of playing this game, but that seems more a question Peridot would ask.

And you already know what Steven's answer would be – "It's fun!"

It is fun. Steven is quicker than you remember him, and he easily catches up with Dr. Drakken, whose elongated torso and diminished legs make you picture those long skinny scissors you saw at the barbershop attempting to run on their stubby handles. Steven jams his outspread palm against Drakken's chest and crows, "Tag – you're it!"

Drakken scowls good-naturedly and takes off after you in turn. He runs with exertion and stubbornness, and at one point is close enough that you can feel the heat of his fingers about to brush your arms. Without even a conscious thought, you leap into the air and catch an updraft with your wings. Drakken looks small from the ground.

"No fair! You're not allowed to fly!" he says.

"Yes, I am!" you laugh down to him.

Drakken lets out another nonsensical mumble, one that does not last very long. Within a matter of seconds, he has produced a vine, accompanied by the yellow petals around his face, and it extends upward and taps you gently.

"Tag! You're it!" Drakken says.

"Okay," you say. You land and chase him the opposite direction, your longer legs swallowing the distance between the two of you.

Steven squeals. "Oh! We can do superpowers, too? Well, how about THIS?"

A pink protective bubble flows in from all directions and encases Steven. Drakken stops to gawk and in that span of time, you land a tagging finger right above his belt. "Tag! Now _you're_ it!" you say. Though the refrain doesn't make much sense, there is a certain strand of celebration running through it.

Drakken doesn't turn around and try to tag you. Instead, he concentrates all his effort on Steven, pummeling the bubble with flowers and growling when they bounce off and their momentum crashes them back against his chin. Steven's husky giggles reverberate off the walls that appear hearty and strong now, worthy to succeed his mother's – until he tips over backward and they blink apart, leaving him flat on the ground. He kicks his feet in mock frustration.

You've forgotten that you snort when you laugh this hard.

It's far too soon when Peridot's arrival breaks up the game. Steven, she claims, has promised to teach her baseball – a rather dull Earth activity, as far as you are concerned.

Peridot doesn't seem to care. She springs on her heels as Steven tucks his arm through hers, stopping only to look back over her shoulder and grin at you, the type of grin Amethyst has described as "cheesy." And while you see no connection between that grin and the yellow melt that tops Drakken's pizza, you are pretty sure you understand the meaning.

"Have fun, Lazuli," Peridot says, as if she is trying to shatter you with pleasantness, tugging Steven down the path. "You, too, Drakken."

You dislike her saying Drakken's name, so much so that it smolders. Steven has told you that on Earth, some types of stones can produce fire if you repeatedly strike them against each other.

The fact that non-sentient lapis and peridot were not among them is only a slight comfort.

Your wonder pulls back; your smile, like driftwood, goes with it. Disinterest, distrust, and fear wash ashore, folding your upper lip over itself.

An organic presence hovers near your elbow. It can only be Dr. Drakken, and you immediately let your lip fall back into place. You hate that he had to see you that way.

Steven looks back and studies the two of you with approval before his expression turns momentarily solemn. "I just thought you guys oughta know right now – Gems can't have kids. Well," he shrugs one shoulder, "they _can_ , but the mom has to give up her physical form."

Drakken turns a bright, sunset shade of pink, and he can only seem to glance at you from the very corners of his eyes. Your own corners retreat into shyness. You can guess at what makes Drakken blush, but you don't know the particulars.

"Ummm…yes…thank you, Steven," Drakken says, perhaps a key or two higher than normally. "But I don't think we've reached that – err – stage in our relationship yet."

You rush to support him. "Yes! No! I mean, we don't flirt. We haven't even parallel parked yet!"

Steven stares at you in a mishmash of confusion. Drakken falls into happy howls of laughter that continue long after Steven has followed Peridot off toward the horizon.

You don't quite understand, and when Drakken turns back to you, you wonder if the embarrassment is still in him.

Yet all he does is spread his arms and ask, "Permission to hug?"

He speaks as if you are a commander, and it shakes a small giggle from you. "Granted," you say.

You are still steeped in lukewarm fear. But his touch is as tender and undemanding as ever. And you ache with the fact that you don't know how to be with him. These past few months have purged you of all knowledge of how to be anything other than lonely – or with Jasper.

Still, you press in tightly to him.

"Are you doing all right?" Drakken asks.

Your neck stiffens against the folds of fabric draping him. "You keep asking me that," you say, rather too testily.

"Because you keep saying you are, and I don't see how you could be!" Drakken exclaims. You feel the instability in the chest beneath your head and, startled, you back up a few paces.

Drakken takes in a breath so big it should secure him for the next hour and drops to the ground right where he stands, arranging his legs so that the feet are hidden below the knees. "Lapis," he says, and it is much softer this time, "will you do me the honor of telling me how you're _really_ doing?"

If you had organs, you feel as though they would be plunging to an oceanic abyss. He is asking for a truthful account, and you are quite out of practice with those.

But he is sitting there, so earnest and the same shade as your wings, and you feel you owe him something. You sit beside him and form the same bow with your legs. "I'm a little scared," you admit cautiously.

Drakken nods as though he were expecting that. It would give him a wise look if his eyes hadn't drifted so far inward they could latch onto each other. "Me too."

This is not the response you anticipated, and it squeezes down the length of your back. "I know it probably sounds silly," you say, "but you know what I'm most afraid of?"

Drakken twists his mouth to one side. "Well, you said it sounds silly, so I'm guessing it's not that we'll all die?"

You drag one finger through the soil, carving a tunnel. "I'm afraid I'll have to fuse again," you say.

"That doesn't sound silly at all," Drakken says, eyes bulging wide. "Not after what you just went through."

You feel your face crumple.

"Lapis? Are you going to cry?" Dr. Drakken's buoy-words sound as though they're being rattled around in a storm, angling themselves for the eye of calm.

"No," you say, both as reply to him and as command to yourself. "No, I'm not going to cry."

"Oh." Drakken seems to sag. "You know, you might feel better if you do. Studies have shown that people who hold their feelings inside are more likely to develop…brain tumors…or depression…or cold sores….or something."

You do not know what any of those things are, and none of them frighten you as badly as the sting you feel taking shape behind your nose. "Well, I _can't_ cry," you say.

"Physically can't?"

"No!" You crush your hands together. "It's just that – if I start crying, I'm never going to stop."

Drakken shakes his head, his tied-back hair flopping like a beached fish. "I know it feels like that, but the average length of a crying spell is only about seven minutes."

Of course he knows that. Of course he has researched it.

The anxious play of Drakken's fingers invites you to relent. You only wish he were talking aloud, so he could drown out Blue Diamond, that harsh tone you strove so hard to never provoke:

 _"By the Moon Goddess, you are a Lapis! Act like one!"_

She does not need to expound on that; you already know. You have never distributed the weight of your burdens. This has made you stronger, but strength is not everything.

You thrust your gaze to your lap. "I didn't know when two different types of Gems fuse, they both disappear into the fusion," you say. "I'd never fused like that before.

"And I don't want to do it again. I don't want to disappear again." You can see it now, spinning before you – the violence with which your wings were forced through your gem; the merciless hijacking of powers reluctant to be used for something other than self-defense; you lying mired on the bottom, nothing more than a handful of sand that finally grew too waterlogged to stay afloat. "I don't want to fuse."

A piece of yourself already left with Jasper. You aren't planning to give away any more.

Drakken gives a sympathetic grunt.

It feels as though the liquid centers of your eyes are splitting. One droplet breaks loose and falls down your cheek. You brush it away, surprised at its warmth.

"I don't think anybody here is going to _make_ you fuse if you aren't ready," Drakken says at last. "Steven definitely wouldn't – he adores you – and look at Garnet. She's all about only fusing for love."

Yes, she is. Her flouting of Homeworld customs has given her the most stable relationship you've ever seen before two disparate Gems, and for an unreasonable moment you resent her for that; you even resent the ghastly pink creature that won you your freedom.

Slowly, you shake your head. "I'm not afraid that any of the Crystal Gems will make me fuse. I'm afraid that they won't – and then we'll all lose." A strange quaking begins in the hollows of your insides. "I don't – I don't want to let them down."

Drakken's eyebrow springs straight up, more flexible than the bark-smudge it resembles. "Are you _serious_?" he says. "Do you not realize the depth – no pun intended – of what you've already done for them? And, as a very wise woman once told me, if you're brave even once, you're not a coward."

You squint, puzzled. "That was me, actually," you say.

Drakken's face continues to glow so brightly, it could almost sustain its own miniature solar system. "I know."

Oh. You have been paid a compliment. The blush across your cheeks is not unpleasant.

"Listen to me, Lapis." Drakken leans in, and his eyes cease their nervous flickering to stare solemnly into yours. "You won't let them down."

It is the same voice he has used to talk about scuba gear and high-fives and mothers, things that just _are_. The cold space between your shoulder blades longs to believe him in place of everything you've been Taught.

"How do you _know_?" you say. It comes out harshly by newly-formed habit, harsher than you intended.

In the dirt, Drakken's fingers have carved a substantial recess, but his gaze never swerves from yours. "Because – I can be a great big scaredy cat. But there are some people in my life – not a lot, but a few – that I would do absolutely anything for, no questions asked.

"You have that for Steven. I can tell," he finishes.

Praise of that magnitude is not what you were expecting. It crashes just above your center, right where the black diamond on your shirt interrupts the blue into separate streams, and it hangs there, beautiful and terrible and full of so much pain. It is tight, very tight. You allow your lower lip, rigid and resolute, one brief quiver.

It is the wrong thread to pull; you come unspooled completely.

The fire in your eyes turns to Earth lava and trickles down your face. You are wondering if there is a way to retract it again, and that is when the choking starts – hard, bitter chokes that slam your shoulders together and then wrench them apart again. The bare patch of your stomach becomes a black hole, a void into which everything spirals. You are on the verge of – and you hate to use this word; it sounds so weak –sobbing.

For someone who has been wanting this to happen, Dr. Drakken does not wear the look of a champion. His fingers coil around the loose chunks of earth, his face awash with its own sadness. One hand, rickety with bone, extends to you and then retreats as though you are an ancient object long rumored to be cursed. Drakken does scoot, on his knees, closer to you and offers a few thin phrases: "Yes, there we go." "It'll be all right." "Yes, let it out."

After a few moments, he adds, "Do you need a tissue?" His pitch shoots upward, helpless, leaving the word you don't understand to roll into your clenched lap.

"What's a tis –" you start to ask and then stop yourself with a shake of your head. Your wet cheeks grab a few strands of hair and hold fast. Vile memories are piling into your chest, so numerous there's no room to manifest lungs. "No. No, I don't need a tissue. I – I need to talk about it."

"About what?" Drakken says.

"About being her," you say.

The air goes as dead as it did at the first fusing of two different Gems. When it comes alive again it, it is not with chastisement and threats of violence; it is only Drakken, gulping at nothing until the knob in his throat jostles.

"All right," he says. "I'm listening."

How, though, do you describe the indescribable? Down at the bottom with the silt and grime, where you never knew darkness could be that dark and cold could run that deep. Your soul entwined with your most hated enemy's, so full you were empty. The pressure of concentration you thought would burst you. Binding Jasper in chains of your own choosing, made of all the things that have been simmering beneath your crust for so long.

"At first," you begin, "all I had to do was hold Jasper down. And that was easy when I was so angry. I kept that picture of Steven with a black eye right at the front of her mind so that Jasper would always see it, too."

A low noise rumbles from Drakken's throat.

"And then – then it stopped being just about Steven. That was when I started slipping." You swipe at a tear. "It was about that Crystal Gem whose name I don't even know destroying my body, and my own people taking me prisoner and then abandoning me when I wasn't useful, and finally going home to a place I didn't recognize, and the only time someone acknowledged me was by throwing me in an interrogation room and treating me like a criminal."

Drakken gives you a stricken look. If he had a gem, you'd fear it was chipping away, one broken bit at a time. You've never known anything else to sketch that type of pain across someone. And yet then he nods, his eyes distant with his own reflections, and you know he understands.

"One day, Malachite looked at the memory of Steven with his black eye – and she was pleased. Then I knew I'd lost control."

"What was _that_ like?" Drakken blurts – and then he draws back as if aware that he has, indeed, requested something far outside your communication scope.

You don't know; there is only the watery pull of the tides and a languid coaxing to release and a comfort that should not have been. You don't know; you can scarcely differentiate between the battle that followed and your own ensuing nightmares –

You attempt to curl your arms, strung as taut as the bow wielded by the fusion of Pearl and Amethyst, around your knees. "It was like…being in a dream," you say slowly. "Like you're there, and you know what's going on, but you're not really part of it. You just float along, and something's not right, but you can't put your finger on what.

"Then, just for a minute, everything's clear, and you know who you are, and you know what doesn't make sense about what's happening. But before you can do anything about it, you're…you're swept under again."

Two lines appear like sentries on either side of Drakken's mouth.

It rips the remainder of the truth from you, a truth you've spent the past several days avoiding. "I formed Malachite to protect Steven. But Jasper used her – used _me_ – to try and destroy him and the rest of the Crystal Gems. My water powers – my wings – everything!"

You pull your voice down from the heights it has reached and deaden it. "If anything had happened to them," you say, "I would have been a part of it."

Drakken's fists jitter on his knees. "How could you have known that, though, Lapis? You can't see the future." He squints one eye at you. "You can't, can you?"

The sweetness of it lifts your spirit and, paradoxically, causes a new round of tears to bubble over. "No," you say, snorting again. "That's a Sapphire trait."

Drakken appears satisfied with himself.

"I could feel how much Jasper hated me," you say. "It wasn't a surprise – I knew she did – but to _feel_ it?"

"Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh," Drakken says.

You can sense your arms locking down still tauter. "Now…now I kind of feel sorry for her."

"For Jasper?" Drakken gawks, eyes doubling in size.

"No. Not for Jasper." You shake your head. "For Malachite. She was so confused. All she knew was hate."

Drakken nods, all solemnity once more. You suddenly wish to see his smile again, that vivid gleam that proclaims Earth a place worthy of exploration and delight.

"And in the end, she couldn't tell what came from Jasper and what came from me," you say. "In the end, Jasper and I were the same."

Drakken's neck arches indignantly. "You and Jasper are not _either_ the same!" he protests. "For one thing, you're different colors…"

He trails off and smacks the flat of his hand against his forehead. "Ngggh, that was the dumbest thing I could have _possibly_ said!"

You know what he means, though. "Look," you say, "it felt good to hurt Jasper." And that, you think, is how you know you went too far. It did not feel good to hurt Steven, Greg, or the Crystal Gems, but hurting Jasper was like the thrum of universe energy itself. "I know when you look at me, you see sweet little Lapis, and you don't think I'm capable of that kind of thing. But I –"

Drakken holds up both palms, as if he is one of those signs standing on corners that halts Earth vehicles. You let it halt you, too, because you can feel yourself drifting out of control, and you do not know what might come next. "No, no, no," he says. "I know what you're capable of. You've told me. I believe it. But you regret it – Jasper doesn't." Then, as if in deference to a facet of himself he no longer uses, he says, "Not that that means she's doomed, because I didn't regret it for a long time, either."

"You?" you repeat – before the words _supervillain_ and _prison_ and _conquest_ ripple across your mind. You peer at Drakken, trying to fuse his rounded jaw and his askew proportions with the severe cut of a Quartz warrior and simply cannot do it; you cannot picture him as fearsome even though you trust his word.

One of Drakken's lips tweaks upward. "Forgot what _I'm_ capable of, didn't you?"

It is another question where the answer is not required. You paddle away from it.

You yearn to be a creature more like Steven, merciful and generous. But you are not; you are a Lapis, angry and thrashing around in anger that's so far removed from your Purpose.

"I don't want to be like this," you say, more to yourself than to Dr. Drakken. "I don't – I've never wanted anything more than I want to not be like Jasper. Even if that means I can't hate her anymore."

Of all the potential reactions, Drakken's "Yes! Yes! YES!" never occurred to you. Before you've even begun to sort it out, he encircles your wrists and leans forward, grinning, flashing those gemstone teeth at you. Outside of Blue Diamond's stringently controlled expressions, it takes you several seconds to identify pride.

You blink. "What did I do?"

"You want to stop hating people so you don't become like the people you hate!" Drakken speaks as though you have renovated the Sea Spire one brick at a time. "Lapis, that is always, always, _always_ the first step! I remember the first time I realized that, and ohhh, it was such a wonderful moment! I'm so _happy_ for you!"

There can be no arguing that. You try to smile back at him, yet your skin is so stiff with dried tears it feels as though it might crack. They are no longer fluid enough to whip away with a toss of your head; instead, you lick the corners of your mouth and come away with a surprising flavor. You've also forgotten that tears are salty, like the sea that was once yours.

It is that thought that recalls the clamp of shackles on your limbs. "But I don't know if I can manage not to," you say.

Drakken's forehead frowns. "Wha?" As usual, he misplaces the _t_ at the end. You are too brittle to smile right now, but you store it away to savor later.

"Not to hate Jasper." Even the feel of her name is more stinging than the cuts and bruises you received in the crash. "She – she – well, I heard what you said yesterday about triggers, right?"

Drakken nods. The grin is gone; you miss it already.

"And I was – we were – under the ocean for so long. Down there at the bottom, in a constant war. It was –" You grope, blindly, realizing you are depending on the memories of another, a tortured fusion who saw things that may not have been real, who experienced peace only by winking out of existence. The words "cold" and "dark" and "scary" seem inadequate, yet you say them anyway, adding, "It was like I could feel the entire ocean pressing down on me. And it's never had a weight before."

Another nod, and the understanding dawns in Drakken's eyes like an unhappy, mangled sunrise.

The silence is suddenly bothersome. The silence and everything else, and you grip in your hands the ends of your hair.

"Don't you get it?" you say. "The _ocean_ is one of my triggers now. I don't want to hate Jasper – but she made me afraid of the ocean! And it was the only place – "

You are unable to finish your sentence. You can only tip your face toward the sun in the hopes that it will evaporate your tears before one of the Crystal Gems stumbles upon you in your moment of weakness.

It is Dr. Drakken who picks up the line you have let go slack, the strings of his buoy-words tangled together. "The Kelp Forest was your science lab," he says. His hands flap. "Oh, Lapis, I'm so – that's such a – I mean – can I just bake you some cookies?"

"Yes." Your nose feels clogged like a pipeline sabotaged by the rebels, and you pinch it, the place where it dips before the upturn at the end. "What are cookies?"

"Cookies are small, sweet things that people bake, and they are delicious." The dainty fingertips tap together in the pattern you know so well. "And when you eat one, it always seems to take away your problems…unless your problem is that you've eaten too many cookies….which has happened to me more times than I care to admit…"

You let his voice drift and blabber like an indecisive wave. When he speaks and you watch him, the convulsive sobs leave, though tears still drain from your eyes.

"Maybe we need to just forget about Jasper for right now," Drakken says.

"Forget about her?" you repeat.

"Put her aside, at least. My psychiatrist says that as long as you don't close the door to it, forgiveness will come in time." Drakken's tone is one of wisdom, so much so that you do not question what a _psychiatrist_ is. "Right now we need to focus on getting you healed."

"Oh. But my gem's fine," you reassure him. You point your back toward him for confirmation.

"No-o," Drakken huffs. He taps a finger lightly, right below your collarbone. "I mean, in here."

You blink at him. "I don't have organs."

Drakken rolls his bottom lip in, bites it. "Okay – let me try this from another angle. Sometimes we get hurt in places that aren't…physical. And they hurt so badly that if it were physical, you guys would –" It is his turn to finish early, looking your way to fill in the blank.

"Regenerate," you supply.

"Yes, precisely!" Drakken claps his hands together, neatly by his standards. "Now, we humans don't have gems to retreat into, so we retreat into other things.

"I tried to conquer the world." Drakken pauses, head cocked slightly, much as Peridot used to when consulting the information feed on her visor. "That's not typical. Most people just try to get a lot of boyfriends or girlfriends, or earn a lot of money, or drink a lot of alcohol."

You cut in, the finger closest to your thumb raised to show you have a question rather than simply a discourteous desire to interrupt. "What's alcohol?"

"It's a…it's a drink," Dr. Drakken says. "If you drink a little of it, it can make you happy, and then if you drink a lot of it, it makes you act stupid, maybe mean, and fall down for awhile."

"Oh." You shudder, imagining a fluid that can corrupt through ingestion, and hope that it does not occur in pools that an unsuspecting human could fall into by mistake. "So – it's bad, then?"

"Can be. Not always," Drakken says. "They say a little of certain types is good for your heart. Not that you need to worry about that, because you don't have a heart – _oooh_ , that sounds terrible – of _course_ you have a heart!" His fingers click off each other. "Yes! That's it! _That's_ what we need to heal right now."

His gaze brushes across yours. "And we'd better get to work on it," he says huskily, "because, I – err – I really like that heart that you have."

Oh. He is being symbolic.

You do not know what composes a symbolic heart, but you want to keep whatever it is that's making him look at you like that.

And you certainly cannot do that with this rage simmering behind your tears. "The ocean isn't the only thing Jasper ruined for me," you mutter.

"What else?" Drakken says. And yet his eyes are already heavy with pain – pain you gave to him. Your pain is not something you can hand off to someone else, the way the Diamonds would burden a Pearl with an object they tire of carrying.

You shake your head. "No, it's okay," you say. "You don't need to know all that. It'll just make you sad."

"Laaa-aaapis!" Drakken groans. "Yes, it will, but the thought of you walking around holding all this in because you think you can't talk to anyone about it will make me even sadder!" He flounces his arms across his chest and throws his head back, and you discover smiling is not impossible. "So – tell me what else Jasper ruined for you. If you would, please!" he adds in a haste.

As you roll the word _please_ around in your mind, a drop of moisture falls from your chin and lands in the dirt. Even that is softer than its counterpart on Homeworld. You pat it down to the grass's roots in awkward gratitude to this planet that, for all its inferiority, has willingly granted you asylum.

"Fusion," you say.

Drakken nods, his expression solemn, far removed from the twinkle that usually lives there. Although you know he's incapable of fusion, it seems as though he understands.

"The Crystal Gems," you continue, finding that a far less charged term than _rebels_ , "talk about fusion like it's so wonderful. But it's something ugly to me. I keep telling myself that that's okay, that I don't _need_ fusion, but then when I see what Ruby and Sapphire have, I know –"

It is Drakken's turn to politely interrupt, his first finger raised. "Excuse me – who are Ruby and Sapphire?"

"Garnet," you explain.

"Ah." Drakken once again seems to be cataloguing that, and you let yourself ponder if a human's physical brain stores reflections the same way yours does. You remember hearing that the organ is full of folds – are the memories kept in those? Can he feel them? Does it hurt if there are too many? "Gotcha."

"I know I'll never have that," you say. The words are weighted as they leave you. "If I ever have another Gem inside me, I'll always think of Jasper. She stole that from me, too."

The ocean's reflection may be streaked and unfriendly now, but fusion's glass is so deeply discolored that it may never again produce an unsullied image. The small of your back still burns with the memory of Jasper's hand as she forced you backward over it. Fear swells in you – careless, enraged, susceptible, everything you are not supposed to be – along with disgust that is perhaps not your own.

"Well," Drakken says, "I can personally guarantee I'll never ask you to fuse with me." He attempts a smile; it drops to the ground, a wingless thing.

Dr. Drakken's image smears in your dampening vision. But you are no longer her – you are not in danger of fleeing reality, and no matter how blurry Drakken is, you want to see him.

Another hand – only marginally bigger than yours; not Jasper's – comes down on the fists you didn't realize you had coiled. "Oh, Lapis," Drakken murmurs. "You know, I never managed to invent a memory wipe…at least, not that I remember. And even theoretically, such a machine could have many medical side effects, not to mention the ethical debate over deleting others' memories. And then there's the whole business with your experiences helping you grow and making you who you are…." He takes a pause for air. "All that to say, I'd take it all away if I could."

His speech is bright, as it always is when he talks of science, and yet you can't miss the soulful note in it. Amid a dusting of birdsong and an abundance of multicolored leaves and all the other small, imperfect workings of Earth, a few more reluctant tears spill over. You expect your eyeballs to shrivel in their sockets, for surely you have cried enough to fill Peridot's silly little smaller-than-average lake. Instead, they nearly groan their relief, with the same breaking-through as when you release your wings.

 _Act like a Lapis!_ Blue Diamond's voice hisses in your mind.

 _I am_ , answers another voice. You think it might be yours. _I'm acting like me._

Drakken plucks at the button on his belt and glances up toward the sky. "You know what?" he says, clearly not expecting an answer. "I _am_ going to go get you a tissue."

He skitters off like a shore-bird into the barn, where you hear him rummaging through the black, oversized plastic sack in which he brought his things – and your teddy bear. Your curiosity has just begun to blossom when Drakken reemerges and places in your hand a flat, thin object. It appears to be made of some sort of paper, though it is soft as a feather and cushioned with something that soothes and soaks, reminding you of Steven's healing saliva.

" _This_ is a tissue," Drakken says grandly.

You glance at Dr. Drakken and then back down at the tissue. You suspect its purpose is to help get the water off your face, but you are unsure how to proceed. Do you place it over your face like a mask and let it seep up the tears? Do you rip it to shreds and place each speck on a drop? Do you roll it up and slide it down your cheeks?

That is when Drakken's fingers curl around yours again, folding the tissue inward so it crumples into a nice wad, which he then guides toward your face. His clumsy grip now steady with the task, he tucks in corners and doubles over sections until the wad is situated comfortably around your pulsating nose. "Now blow," he instructs.

"Blow?" you ask.

"Breathe out really hard through your nose."

You do, staring in awe at what follows.

"Oh," you say, somewhat sheepishly. "I forgot about that part."

Drakken takes the now-sticky tissue from you, chuckles at the sight, and folds it back over on itself, using the dry patches to blot at your cheeks. Every one of his dabs whispers against your skin, _You are worthy._

For the moment, you are unafraid to believe him. There is, after all, certainly no risk of you ever returning to the Gem you once were on Homeworld, not after all that has transpired.

You blink, your eyelashes wet. "Thanks. I – I haven't cried in a long time."

"I can tell." Drakken's eyes turn downward at the corners. "You were all plugged up."

With that, he reaches for your forehead fringe of hair and hooks a strand between two fingers. He slides it back and forth several times, whisking it to your temple and then swinging it back, a stutter taking physical form.

"What are you doing?" you ask.

Drakken's mouth makes a popping noise and then says, "I have no idea. I think it's supposed to be comforting."

You can't imagine why it would be, and yet you can't deny a certain, safer sensation like a wreath around your head, even after he lets go. "Well," you say, "it sort of works."

Dr. Drakken's grin returns as if it, too, has simply been waiting for the thumb's-up from you. It's a most welcome sight, and your attempt to return it is no longer quite so painfully stiff with salt.

"I hate crying," you say.

"It's a real draggler, isn't it?" Drakken agrees.

Although you don't think that's a word yet, you see no reason why Dr. Drakken is any less qualified to add to his native language than any of the others who have invented words throughout the centuries. You just nod and say, "I guess I must be a full-fledged Crystal Gem now."

"How so?" Drakken says.

"They cry _all the time_." You have reached the point of collapse, in a wholly different way than the months you spent dominating Jasper; while you can still feel the exchange of the universe's energy inside your gem, you have no strength to roll your eyes, and the ground feels like clouds beneath you. "As soon as there's a crisis, and as soon as it's over, win or lose."

Drakken rolls over to his belly, his face aglow in the presence of facts he wants to study further. "Fascinating," he says, without a hint of derision. "Does Jasper?"

"Does Jasper what?" you say, rather stupidly, because you cannot reconcile the two concepts. " _Cry_?"

Drakken nods.

"Never."

The answer comes easily. Remembering Jasper is not simply a reflection; it is an invasion. You are intimately acquainted with everything about her: her venom, her strength, her brutal tenacity. You are aware where every piece fits around you and in you.

You shudder.

Drakken tilts his head again. "Well – who seems more emotionally healthy to you?"

It is as though you're a fish, and he is dangling a baited hook in front of you. You know what he is doing, and yet you have no choice but to respond, "Well – ugh – _obviously_ the Crystal Gems." They are not powerhouses as Jasper is, but they are strong even when weak, and they never seem to feel the need to resort to banging other Gems against walls and bellowing threats down at them. And certainly anyone is healthier than Jasper.

Except, possibly, you.

You squeeze your eyes shut for a brief instant. No, Earth has never been your home; you have never belonged with the Crystal Gems. But it would be far better than belonging with Jasper.

Dr. Drakken is looking at you with the firm belief that you don't.

You repay him in the only way you know how.

"I hate crying," you repeat. "But – you were right."

"About what?" Drakken says.

"I'm not fine yet."

Dr. Drakken does another of those empty-mouthed swallows, only this time you recognize that it is the words _I KNEW it!_ that he is shoving back down. You are not too broken to appreciate it, especially when he coughs – as a subject-changer, you gather, rather than a critical symptom.

"You know, your talk about fusion reminds me of the way I feel about kissing," Drakken says. He turns closer to you, a frown resting on his eyebrow. "Do – do your people kiss?"

"Not in _public_." You feel your cheeks scorch a darker shade of blue; the embarrassment is halved when Drakken also breaks into pink splotches.

"Well," Drakken says, "human beings will kiss when they really, really like each other. It's supposed to be….very special and romantic and sweet." A pause that lasts too long. "That's not been my experience." The spasmodic movements of his hands confirm his words.

Despite your hesitance to pry, you have to ask – "What's been your experience, then?" You wonder, worriedly, if he felt the kiss you placed upon his cheek last night. It was meant as an honor, one of the few you could still give; you hope you did not take something away from him as you did so.

"You see, the first time a woman ever kissed me on the mouth –" Drakken says.

Against all your Teaching, you interrupt: "On the _mouth_?" You've never heard of it. If such a thing ever has ever taken place between two Gems, it was done in the utmost secrecy.

"I know, right?" Drakken's face is glassed with fear, looking back at something from which you cannot defend him. "Anyway, the first time a woman ever – did that – it was Shego."

Your jaw springs out of the careful clamp you have yet to perfect. " _Shego_?" you say. Dr. Drakken speaks of his friend Shego often, and it is clear he cares for her very much, but you never thought of them as having that kind of relationship.

"My reaction exactly. Except – come to think of it – I was much less calm. At first, I thought she'd developed a crush on me," Drakken says. He must detect your puzzlement, because he adds, "A crush is when you fall in love with someone really fast and not always for any real reason. I think they call it that because that's what it feels like."

You envision one of Garnet's gauntlets coming down on a hated object, and you nod.

He cringes, as if the memory bruises him. "But it turned out she was only under the influence of an emotion controller."

Were it someone other than him – and were you not picking your way back from the edge of crying – you might reply with, "Oh, of _course_. Don't you _hate_ it when that happens?"

As it is, you merely motion for him to continue.

"So it wasn't really her fault at all. I don't hold her responsible in any way." Drakken's eyes appear to overflow their sockets for a moment, as though trying to bulge their way into yours, frantic for you to understand. "But it still happened. She dragged me to the mall and cornered me –"

This time you have to ask: "What's a mall?" You are envisioning a torture chamber, unused before the War, stocked with acutely-pointed instruments for precision cracking.

"It's like down on the boardwalk," Drakken says. "You know, where all the shops and restaurants are? It's just all of that together in one big building."

You attempt to picture such a place, the same tight mass of people and the noise level encased without a glimpse of your sky or an opportunity to feel the fresh sea breeze that even now rattles the limbs above your heads. It sounds stifling, not a romantic place even by Earth's standards. Your gem ripples like a tide pool, a feeling that slinks outward to the layer of skin you wear.

Drakken's voice brings you back. It rattles, too, as though it is also at the mercy of the wind. "Ohhh, Lapis, it was _terrible_. I never knew that lips could make _heat_ like that…and she was holding me hard enough to hurt….and I couldn't squirm away…and there was her mouth right there…and she'd always been like family to me. I almost forgot how to breathe."

This is quite an accomplishment. You remember being Taught that humans' breathing was automatically regulated by the brains, which had always struck you as being somewhat advanced for creatures who still needed to rely on standard organs.

No, you cannot picture a mall. But it takes no effort at all to imagine – or remember – how it is to be barricaded on all sides and caught in a grip that will never relent, repugnant and yet irresistible.

"I just felt so…dirty." Drakken stabs his fingers into the earth with the bitter purpose of an Injector, though they barely scratch the surface.

You nod again. "That's a good word." That is the sensation exactly: of being soiled by filth to which you are unaccustomed, filth you cannot flick away with one snap of your body.

"And that was my first real kiss," Drakken says. "Not exactly the type that makes you look forward to the next one."

Those words could be delivered wryly, but the corners of his mouth hunch downward.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you," you say. The politeness was part of your Teaching; the slice of sorrow was not.

"Me too," Drakken says. "Now it scares me to kiss anyone ever again…even someone that I really, _really_ like."

You do not miss that the corners of his eyes point toward you and then glance away. Your cheeks warm again.

"My psychiatrist says it's because my first experience was about power and not love. So I figure that must be how fusion feels to you. Actually, it probably feels even worse, since fusion is so much more…involved, you know." Drakken groans. "Nngggh, Drakken, you're probably not making her feel any better!"

"No – you are," you say. "It makes sense – you understand – it helps." It helps simply to see that another living being knows what it means to be ravaged by another's presence, even after she has been evicted.

A cloud stretches thin over the sun, sending down diaphanous rays that match the inkling of a smile on Dr. Drakken's lips. Gold stripes your feet, and your head knows the peace that the innermost curves of your gem cannot grasp.

Drakken's black eyelids slip shut, then open again. You can see the awe on his face, the love he feels for his home planet, and are momentarily, deeply envious. When he blurs this time, it is like viewing him through the film of your own wings rather than the distortion from when you were her.

"Right, now, where was I?" Drakken mutters. "The nervousness, the kissing…ah yes!" He clicks his fingers together again. "The nervousness _about_ kissing!

"There are some people that just don't get it, you know?" Drakken tries to scoot toward you on his knee and instead tumbles to his elbows in the dirt, his humanity ungainly and feeble and so very welcome after Jasper. "They say things like, 'Oh, come on, it's just _kissing_! Get over it.'"

You have not had that problem. The Crystal Gems, you realize, are far quicker to fuse than Homeworld would accept, and yet they don't take it that lightly.

"You can't be with those kinds of people," Drakken says. He levels his gaze at you, somber above the sweeping circles. "They may not be trying to hurt you, blah-blah-blah, but they don't understand. And that's no help at all!" He plants his curled wrists on either side of his green-buttoned belt, the only landmark on his flat, thin body.

You acknowledge him with still another nod. "How do you get better?" you ask.

You need to know. You need to be able to look at the sea again and not be struck with equal parts fear of it and yearning for Jasper's questionable companionship – a strange, backward mixture that leaves you feeling like no more than a shard.

Dr. Drakken's chuckle is as rich and thick as ice cream, nearly as cold and not as sweet. "You ask me like I'm there yet. It takes a long time. Months. _Years_ , even!"

He says _years_ with the dramatic evocation of one who has never spent thousands of them in captivity. You can no longer scoff at time, however, not with every second spent shackled to Jasper an eon in itself.

"And there's not really a set formula, either. Which is too bad, because I'm _great_ with formulas! I'm a scientist." Drakken allows a hint of braggadocio to touch him, a refreshing sea change after so much anguish.

Another denser cloud throws the area into soothing shade. The dappled darkness across Drakken nearly hides his remnant of a wound – the one that you know he must have been so courageous to live through, no matter how much he cried when he got it.

"So what _is_ there?" you ask.

Drakken chuckles, the sound like an unexpected burst of thunder breaking apart a drought. "Well, what is there always in science when there aren't formulas? There's theories and experimentation and hypotheses…" He frowns and taps the sides of his head where the hair thins. "I was going somewhere with that. Got a little lost in the metaphor…"

"It's okay. It was a good metaphor," you say. He makes science seem as wide with possibilities as space is, not the tight squeezing strip that binds Peridot to her recordings. "But I'm ready to hear what it actually means now."

"Ah. Yes." Drakken taps his chin and then says, "Well – you have to keep trying, for one thing. You have to never, ever, ever, _ever_ give up hope. You have to find out what works for you. And you have to find people who love you – who you can trust – and never let them go. People like Steven."

 _And you._

"Garnet says that love is the answer," you say. There is a thickness bobbing inside you, and your words split to either side of it like a stream forks around a boulder.

"Well, scientifically speaking, it doesn't answer everything," Drakken says. The cloud metes out portions of sunlight; he squints against it and then peers back at you, his gaze soft and glistening as wet clay. "But it's always a good place to start."

Drakken reaches over and places his hand atop yours. Even through his black glove, you can feel the shakiness of his fingers and the nervous dampness of his palms. He is a shard, too – and together, you almost make a whole.

And then you know something, in the deepest crevices of your gem, with the same clarity that long ago memorized each potential route to and from Homeworld. You cannot go through life cowering, like the damaged Gem you once were, from things which no other Gem fears. If you do so, you will always be a part of Malachite, dictated by Jasper's whims.

"Dr. Drakken, will you do something for me?" you ask.

"Anything!" Drakken blurts. Then his face scrunches up and he adds, "Will it hurt?"

Your giggle rubs against a spot sore from the exertion of your only recent sobs. "No. I mean, it shouldn't."

Drakken waves you on.

"Will you dance with me?" you say.

Drakken's eyes startle somewhat, though not in the way human swimmers' do when they spy a shark or a stingray. "You mean… your special dance? That one? Take your hand and twirl you?" he says, with a lot of extra letters babbled in between.

His loudness expands until you can no longer imagine all the admonitions Blue Diamond would pelt at you, and you nod at him. "Yes," you say. "I want to remember you twirling me – not Jasper."

The only one you trust more is Steven, but if you danced with Steven, you could fuse with him, and you are not ready for that yet.

For a bare second, Drakken only stares, and then his full cheeks fluff into a smile that you'd readily believe could guide ships to shore. Nothing comes from his throat except for a couple more of those empty swallows, and his nods come in such rapid succession you wonder if perhaps he is stuck.

"Lapis – I would be honored," he says at last. His voice has done some thickening of its own.

 _Honored_. Such a term is almost impossible to use casually.

Dr. Drakken stands up and brushes loose earth from his lab coat, his fingertips gyrating. "It's…it's been a long time since I danced with a real girl."

You consider telling him that, technically speaking, you are not "real" but are stopped by the reflection of Peridot's tape recorder lying mangled on the ground. You have disrespected enough gifts for the week.

Drakken reaches a hand down to you and helps you to your feet. "I might step on your feet," he warns.

"I'm not going to break," you reassure him, smiling. You scrub the backs of your hands across the last few dried tears, as if picking at plaster, and you let the wind have its way with your bob and your skirt and the ribbon-tie on your top.

This time, Drakken's laugh has a snuffling, wet edge. "No…you've proven that," he says, so quietly he might be speaking only to himself.

Still, as you release your hand and step back, he handles you with the utmost consideration, and you cannot be annoyed because you're too grateful, grateful that his is not Jasper's grip, a crushing weapon to rival the abyss itself.

Although timidly your shoulders want to roll forward to meet each other, when the air touches your face you can thrust them back with confidence. It has the feel of a transition, of all things crisp and fresh, of regenerating and starting over. Instead of sand set aflame, silken grass yields beneath your feet, and you face a toothy grin that has not been honed to a point.

When Drakken's chest begins to dent inward, you rush a pair of lungs and take a mouthful of Earth's air with him, breathing out only when you see his chest expand again, just to ensure your bodies are in sync.

You begin.

Tiny flits carry you across the grass, playing with Earth's gravity. Your leg arcs toward a sky clouded by vapor rather than smoke. You leap forward, your hand extending upward. Right on time, other fingers, scarcely bigger than yours, catch and curl around yours. You can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips as they clumsily gentle themselves, spin you in a semicircle, and then ease you into a dip across one gangling arm.

And this time, you leave your eyes wide open.


	13. Dinner

**~Lapis meets Mama Lipsky. I was hoping to get this proofread and uploaded before Thanksgiving break, but alas, it was not to be. Still, better late than never, right? Hope you enjoy and that you all had a great turkey day.~**

There are beautiful things about Earth.

The sky now is one of them. Through your newly-rinsed vision, it seems cleaner and brisker than before, a mosaic of every shade of blue you have ever seen: your skin, Drakken's skin, your hair, your eyes, your dress, Drakken's lab coat, Steven's trousers. The clouds have firmed up and stand strong against it, their edges distinct as if one of Homeworld's great artists has outlined them with a fine-bristled brush, separating them from the endless blue.

The placid give of grass beneath your feet, something you fondly recall from before your planet went to technology and metal, is another of these things, as is the sound of Steven's laughter from the front of the barn – even if it _is_ mixed with Peridot's shrill exclamations.

As is the look on Dr. Drakken's face when you tell him your teddy bear's last name.

"Plastic Lazuli Hope," he says, patting the bear's tiny hand. "Delighted to meet your acquaintance."

You lift Plastic's arm and put on a squeaky voice, pretending to talk for the bear as you've seen Steven do with his. "Nice to meet you, too, Dr. Drakken."

"Do you like your new owner?" Drakken says. "You do, don't you? I knew she'd take good care of you!"

Rather than heating, your cheeks crease in puzzlement. You have never thought of yourself as a caretaker, much less a responsible one. Only because this bear is not a living being that you can hurt are you able to take it as the praise as which it was meant.

Even so, you hurriedly pass Plastic off to Drakken. For all his bumbling, he handles her with something just short of reverence, placing her in the plastic sack that holds his belongings, hooking her arm around the arm of his own teddy, and tucking the sack into a niche formed by the dashboard.

"All right, we're loaded and ready," Drakken says. He thumps the vacant seat beside him. "Here, you can ride in the front, next to me."

You let your eyes fall to half-mast and your tone do the same. "Or I can fly because I have wings."

There are straps on the seats. They are safety harnesses, no doubt, but the thought of constraints of any kind flashes white-hot down your back.

"Oh."

Dr. Drakken's sudden droop dismays you. You flash him a quick smile and add, "But I can fly right next to you so you don't get lonely."

He brightens.

You walk to the front of the barn again and bid a warm goodbye to Steven and a stiffer one to Peridot. She does not even attempt to touch you, to her credit, merely watching you expectantly. Steven throws both arms around you and hugs you so tight that it squeezes the digestive system recently formed to deal with that cereal, so tight that your body has no choice but to straighten into a twig shape. Yet there is no pain, only Steven's enviable purity.

You rest your hand atop his curly hair. "'Bye, Steven," you repeat. "Thanks – thanks for everything."

"You're welcome," Steven says. "But it's not 'goodbye', okay? It's just – 'see you later'."

"All right." You ruffle the curls. "See you later, then."

The way he tilts his head to study you – it is the first time in six millenniums you have felt at home on Earth…or anywhere else.

"Take care of yourself, Lapis!" calls the white Pearl. Her clear, liquid words are wrapped with a duty that she was never assigned.

"Yeah, and maybe try to actually have some fun for once in your life!" Amethyst adds, wagging her head in mock irritation. It could be an insult – or it could be a well-wishing, and since you have determined to see only the beautiful today, you accept it as the latter.

Garnet stands, silently as usual, in the doorway of the barn. She appears to be conducting one last check to make sure they have everything they need. Surely in her mind she is following the stream of each possible future where something has been left behind. You have always been curious about how that works, and yet how does someone explain something so innate?

That is not why you slowly make your way over to Garnet. You have a vague, flawed memory of her carrying you as you swam beyond consciousness, and you wonder if she might be someone you can trust, the type of Gem you need in your life now. You owe her – for the subdued strength so different from Jasper's force you could feel in the arms beneath you; for the lack of judgment on her expressionless slab of a face, even though Malachite must have seemed such a travesty to a complementary fusion like Garnet.

The only honorable thing to do is offer what you have left. You approach from the side, slowing down even further, because you have forgotten how tall she is, so much taller than you. You remember her insistence that they bubble the mirror, convinced you were a corruption, and you question your own reasoning. Her gauntlets, however, have been shed today, leaving behind surprisingly delicate hands.

"Hi," you say.

Garnet's chin jerks to acknowledge your presence. You are not expecting more than that.

"I don't know if you remember me," you say. Your pitch is high and weak, even for you. "I was on the base when you first fused."

"I remember you." Garnet sounds exactly like a Sapphire, tranquil and aloof. "You were the one _not_ screamin' insults."

Her speaking to you is a marvel in and of itself. Garnet conserves her words, as though she is only allotted a certain amount each hour and she prefers to save them for the people she is most comfortable with.

You hesitate on your next sentence. Although your alignment with Steven and your acts against Jasper have surely brought shame upon Blue Diamond, you have never directly spoken against her, and you are nervous to do so now. "I'm really sorry for what Blue Diamond tried – tried to –"

Garnet cuts you off – "Wasn't your fault."

It is as if she, too, has scooted over and patted a seat beside her. The moment is remarkable in its normalcy.

Garnet's sunglasses tilt down ever so slightly. You can see yourself reflected in them, can see a durability you don't remember being present on your face.

"Well – see you later," you say.

It earns you another jerk of the chin.

You turn and walk back to the hovercraft, trailing a budding connection behind you. It is as rickety as the rope bridges humans constructed when you first arrived on Earth, and yet it is there. You think it may be trust.

"Ready, Lapis?" Drakken says once you are back to the hovercraft.

You crouch, ready your heels, and tense your arms. A silken breeze slides down your skin, cooling the patches that are still damp. "Ready."

As the hovercraft lifts steadily from the ground, you take a moment to close your eyes and then thrust them open again. You project yourself, your feet springing from the ground at the exact instant your wings spring from your gem. You spin like a hurricane until you reach the right altitude, and then you release.

You laugh, emancipated and weightless, into the wind.

When you turn your head to the left, Dr. Drakken is there, grinning widely, piloting the hovercraft with fumbling, clever hands. "How's the weather over there?" he calls.

"Just as nice as where you are!" you respond.

He chuckles.

Some stretches of your flight are so still that you need to pump your wings, beat them frantically – a good, sturdy feeling – while others have enough wind that you can simply coast along, the occasional flap as automatic as Drakken's breaths. At one point you pass over a large stone arc that reaches up nearly to touch the hovercraft or scrape your bare belly; Drakken tells you it is called "The Arch" and it was built by humans.

At one point, a rainstorm builds in your path, and since it only takes a flick of your body to rid it of water, you hover above Drakken's head to keep him dry.

"I didn't know you doubled as an umbrella!" he says.

"Could an umbrella do _this_?" You pluck a handful of leaves from a nearby towering tree and drop them, one by one, on Drakken's head before it occurs to you to say, "I don't like being compared to objects anymore."

"Ohhhh. Because of –" Drakken's voice dips so low you can't even hear it, but you know what "mirror" looks like shaped on someone's lips. And if you didn't, you could still guess, based on his cringing shoulders. Everyone acts as though you will shatter if they bring up the things you have been through, and you don't especially care for it.

Even if they're right.

You just nod, and Drakken nods back. Communicating with Jasper was not that easy when you were sharing a soul.

"Ooh, Lapis, _look_!" Drakken cries. One finger points straight ahead of him. "A rainbow!"

"A what?" you ask, and then you see. It is The Arch, in the sky, translucent with a full spectrum of colors. Ruby slides into Jasper, Jasper into Yellow Diamond, Yellow Diamond into Peridot, Peridot into Sapphire, Sapphire into Amethyst, a fusion where they each have their own glorious stripe.

That is when you understand why Drakken once loved his home planet enough to wish for control of it. Taken on its own merits and not compared to Homeworld in its glory days, it would be magnificent.

Over the course of the journey, you see more of Earth's hidden beauty. You fly over rolling fields of grass that shimmer in the sun. Vast – is "forests" the right word? – of trees blaze their new seasonal colors like a fire – a comforting fire, kindled by a Ruby to warm her friends, not the inferno of the battlefield. Not all the leaves are the same; some are long and slender, others squat and symmetrical, and still others so resemble Dr. Drakken's copper coins that you expect them to jingle rather than clap in the breeze. There are mountains, even, hugged by thick layers of trees all up the sides and then left bare on the peaks, reminding you of Greg's head.

And water. There is always, always water. Lakes in the shape of fingers. Great rushing rivers. Miniature ponds surrounded by concrete, with metal ladders leading on. All shimmering in the sun, alive with their own ripples, pleading for reconciliation.

You don't know if you're ready to give it to them. It is strange to be afraid of something which is completely under your power.

But maybe that's it precisely.

"Tell me again what mothers are like," you say to Drakken. You have never known a mother other than Rose Quartz, and even now it occurs to you that did not truly _know_ Rose.

"A mother…is kind and strong and loving and protective." Drakken's buoy-words drift in a light mist; he takes another empty swallow. "And the scariest person in the world to have mad at you."

That sounds exactly like Rose, actually.

The two of you are quiet for another few Earth-miles before Dr. Drakken squeals from the rumbling back of his throat and sticks a finger straight ahead and down. When your eyes follow it, you discover you are now flying over a series of close-set, sloping roofs. The buildings are each painted a pleasant yet unremarkable sand-like shade, and the road between them is fading black and as smooth as the white Pearl's speech.

"Where are we now?" you say.

"This is Middleton," Drakken announces, chest thrusting. "This is where I live!"

The second sentence is almost unnecessary. There's a splendor in his voice that only emerges when one is talking about one's home.

Drakken makes a turn to the right and swoops the hovercraft low over one section of road, and you pin your wings back so you can dip with him. The buildings are spaced farther apart, and yet the effect is more closed-in than Beach City - not claustrophobic, just compact. Each roughly the same size and shape; each attached to a horizontal sweep of white stone that appears to be used to store earth vehicles; each centered in rectangular patches of grass, some of which are decorated with trees transforming to their fall colors – the only real difference between them is the color of their doors and the placement of their windows, like a line of fresh-cut Rubies distinguished solely by gem location.

You pass over another building, similarly sized and arranged, that nevertheless stands out, decorated as it is with bright blue circles, each larger than your head.

It is such a bold, unexpected sight that you giggle aloud. "That's your house, isn't it?" you call to Drakken.

He beams and nods.

The hovercraft cranks sharply to the left, and you soon fly over a long purple building surrounded by vehicles on every side. Drakken tells you that is the mall; it is less severe than you imagined it. It sports a glass dome rather than a ceiling and its doors, which open and shut at the approach of a human, are translucent as well.

You continue until Dr. Drakken lets out another roughened squeal. Your gaze anticipates a spectacle and is surprised to shore on a chipped vehicle storage path that supports a small car of brightest yellow. The house to which it is attached is medium height for a house and narrow, as though holding its breath, trying to fit into the slot between scrubby rations of grass. Unlike the proud stone houses around where Drakken lives, it is made of wood, old, dark wood that sags and lists the whole structure slightly to the right. It reminds you of your planet's relics, before everything became stainless and efficient.

And it seems to beckon you closer.

The hovercraft lands on the road, and you land beside it, slipping your wings back into your gem. Drakken climbs out. His eyes are solemn as he uncertainly lowers his hands to your shoulders.

"Now, before we go in, there a few things you should know," he says. He leans forward, pressing his meaning into you with his eyes. "About what to expect from my mother. Things that'll – that'll – well, it'll just help you get along better."

Your gem pulses nervously. You have long known how to submit and just recently learned to dominate; _getting along_ is something you struggle to accomplish.

"First of all, she likes to be called Mama Lipsky," Drakken says.

"Okay."

"And she _loves_ to give hugs." Drakken drops his hands to wring one wrist. "I've told her about how you're a little wary of being touched too and asked her to please try to rein it in a little for you. She seemed like she was listening, but…." He shrugs. "There's this little move I've perfected, where you kind of squirt out of her hug and climb down over her back, though I don't recommend it until she's seriously about to rupture your spleen."

"I don't know what a spleen is, and I don't think I have one," you tell him.

Drakken looks momentarily puzzled, and then he grins. "Right! The whole thing where you don't have internal organs…that must come in handy. So – how much experience do you have with the utensils used for eating?"

"None," you say.

"Okay – well – quick course. They each have handles on one side, but the top sides are different. Spoons – you know what spoons are, right? Steven and I used them on our cereal this morning?"

You nod. You remember the slim metal stalks that blossomed into indented ovals at the end.

"Those are used for when a substance is primarily liquid," Drakken explains. "Soups, cereal in milk, pudding, etc."

"All right," you say. It was fairly easy to operate a spoon this morning. You don't think you will have too much trouble with them.

"Now, _forks_ are used for solids," Drakken says. "Forks split into little spikes called _tines_ at the top. You use the tines to stab solids so you can lift them to your mouth.

"Ah, but sometimes you have a solid that's too big to stick in your mouth. What then? Well, that's where _knives_ come in!" Drakken jabs a finger forward, his face giddy with the information he's about to impart. "Knives have a _blade_ on their other side."

"Like a sword?" you ask.

"I suppose, yes." Drakken wags his head from side to side. "So you hold your knife in – um, I don't suppose you know whether you're right- or left-handed?"

You stare down at your hands. "I have both," and this confuses you, because you can see that Dr. Drakken's thumbs point in opposite directions and you believe humans have both, too.

"Oh. Right." Drakken whacks the flat of his hand against his forehead and drags it down into his eyebrow. "Of course. It's just that – what I mean – ngggh. Humans have a _dominant_ hand that's significantly stronger than the other. For most humans, that's the right hand, but for me it's the left. But I guess Gems' hands are probably equally strong, huh?"

You nod again, studying Drakken's hands this time. They both look small and flimsy to you, neither one more so than the other: it is another human intricacy invisible to Gem eyes.

"Oh," Drakken repeats. "Well, normally the advice is to put the knife in your dominant hand to cut while your other hand holds the food in place with your fork, but it sounds like you can do whatever you want with the knife. As long as you only touch the handle!" he adds hastily. "You _never_ want to grab the blade."

Drakken reaches up and strokes his fingertips over the ragged permanence of his scar. The skin you wear tingles the way it did when Jasper's fingernail nicked at your own cheek, though nothing has broken through it.

You press as close to Dr. Drakken as you can without touching him, the top of your head coming to just above his elbow. "Anything else?"

"Yes. There'll be all kinds of food there, and it'll all be wonderful, because my mother's a great cook! Still, on the off-chance you don't like something, it's best not to spit it across the table the way you. . ." Drakken stops and plucks his lips like guitar strings, as if he is considering whether or not to complete this thought.

"The way I did with the pizza," you finish for him. You knew it was probably rude as you soon as you did it. Your mouth had simply never been filled with anything that oily before, and despite the inviting flavor, you couldn't shake its resemblance to spaceship fuel, and you needed it gone _now_.

"Yes. No. Er, that's not generally something you should do, unless someone screams, 'Spit that out! It's poisonous!' or something. But there is this handy little trick you can do: when nobody's looking, you can very discreetly pull your napkin up to your lips and kind of transfer the food into it." Drakken demonstrates, pantomiming dribbling into an invisible napkin.

"All right," you say.

"And – please, please, _please_ don't tell my mother if you don't like something," Drakken says.

You roll your toes inward. "You want me to _lie_?"

"No, no, no!" Drakken gives his head another enthused shake. "Not lie. Just…not tell her everything."

A reflection clicks cleanly into place, of the first time you withheld information from authority. "Because it isn't relevant to the mission," you venture.

"Exactly!" Drakken claps his hands at his waist and finally skitters up to the cordial level of wood surrounding the front of the house. "And the mission is getting her to love you."

There's a weight to what he says, and you understand why. If you squander this chance, you will likely never in all the cosmos get another one like it.

"Oh, but don't worry, Lapis!" The somber expression is washed away by a galactic smile. "I'm sure she will!"

Drakken pokes a small button beside the door. You expect it to flash a signal alerting whoever is inside to the presence of visitors and are startled by the deep note that seems to reverberate through the building's entire framework instead.

Your fingers have been stiff sticks of driftwood at your sides; now they turn as cold and limp as a pair of bad clams. "If I promise never to do it again, will you _please_ not tell your mother I dropped leaves on your head?" you say. Your tone splinters right before it can fall into begging.

Drakken gives his forehead another quizzical wrinkle. "Why, that's very nice of you, Lapis, and of course –"

The door creaks open, and there stands Mama Lipsky. You wonder if only the women with big pink hair are designated to be mothers.

She is smaller than you, which most humans are not, and stout, and everything about her – her flesh, her flower-patterned dress, the emotion in her eyes – seems soft. Her face, so much like Drakken's, breaks into a miniaturized version of his grin.

"Ohhhh, Drewbie!" Mama Lipsky says shrilly. Her words are not soft – they are thicker than his, and creamier, but you recognize their buoyancy. "Welcome home!"

The look she gives Drakken is an embrace; it is an oath of loyalty; it would be a perfect precursor to fusion.

"Oh, and you must be _Lapi_ s!" Mama Lipsky's attention shifts to you. "Hello there, dear!"

There is a gulf inside you that you did not realize you had until she fills it. Her look at you is not as devoted as the one she gives to Drakken, yet it is open and generous and alive with potential. You have the urge to curtsy and address her as "My Diamond."

You settle for looking into her eyes, black seeds similar to Plastic's, and saying, "Yes. And you must be Mama Lipsky. Very nice to meet you."

Drakken's hands become shooting stars, everywhere and all at once. "Oh, errr, yes," he says. "Lapis, Mother. Mother, Lapis."

That is more or less unnecessary, as far as you are concerned, but you hesitate to tell him. You focus instead on every embroidered vine wending its way down the front of Mama Lipsky's dress until you can take comfort in the reflection of the vine Drakken used to tag you just this morning.

Mama Lipsky indulges Drakken with another smile, walks to your side, and gives you a pat on the knuckles. Her hands feel every bit as soft as they look, as though they might squish at the touch, like the desert-mud where your people carved the Beta Kindergarten.

"Come in, come in," she says. "And I'll get you something to eat." She makes a clucking, birdlike sound with her tongue. "My goodness, you're thin as a rail."

You frown down at the arrangement of light that forms your body. "No. We have fence rails at the barn, and I'm definitely thicker than they are."

"Gems don't gain or lose weight, Mother," Drakken adds.

And for a moment, you are dazzled by the fact that humans _can_ change sizes, naturally, and their skin still falls neatly in place without even the aid of shapeshifting.

Still – are you imagining, or did you hear a hint of disapproval from Mama Lipsky? The soft little eyes appraise you; were she Blue Diamond, you would release your wings for inspection.

"I can shapeshift myself fatter if you want," you offer. It will hold at least for the duration of the meal.

Mama Lipsky blinks – hers are slow and careful to her son's rapid flashes – and shakes her head, her hair seemingly welded into place like Peridot's. "No, no," she says at last. "That's quite all right, sugar. Come on in."

You're not entirely sure why she just referred to you as a cane plant, and yet the words are as warm at the edges as the lighter blue fingers that slip between yours, his thumb playing nervously across yours. Besides, as much as Dr. Drakken loves sugary foods, it must be a nice thing to call someone.

Drakken steps inside the house, and you follow in accordance with Mama Lipsky's invitation. The house is modest, fraying a bit yet not dilapidated. The patterned paper clings tenaciously to the walls, though it is shadowed with age. The couch in the living room sags in the middle, as though carrying a great, invisible weight. In the room beyond that – the kitchen – sits a table that has been nicked and sanded and re-nicked so many times that the Diamonds would refuse to sit there at all.

They wouldn't have fit, anyway. The whole of the table could rest inside their travel-boxes with room to spare. On top of its surface are things that must be other forms of food: ruddy slabs of meat glazed lightly with brown at the tops, a bowl of pale-yellow mush studded with green flecks, small lumps of bread whose tops curve into domes as though emulating the mall's ceiling, and a pink frothy spread garnished with the skinny fruit with peels the same color as Peridot's hair – _bananas_ , you think you heard Steven call them.

Aromas you have never smelled before lap and tease at your nose. Beside you, Dr. Drakken's tongue is dribbling slightly through his lips, which must be that human sensation known as hunger. You can't experience it, despite the good smells, and you hope its absence won't displease Mama Lipsky.

You hardly notice when Drakken flits away for a moment. Mama Lipsky bustles around the kitchen; though her stance is wider-legged than Drakken's, they share quick, fluttering movements. You are struck again by her winsome resemblance to her son, and you say, "I can see where Drakken got his big chin."

The kindness in your voice must go undetected. To your horror, Mama Lipsky's eyebrows pinch inward, along with the rest of her face. It is as though you have insulted her, but to insult someone you have to call them an idiot or a coward or a bully – insults have nothing to do with one's chin.

Drakken chooses then to reappear and to drag you a few steps aside. His whisper is too loud when he says, "Lapis – it's not always polite to comment on someone's appearance."

It is your turn to blink. "But it's true."

"In case it's something they don't like about themselves," Drakken says.

More confused than ever, you turn back to Mama Lipsky, only marginally able to meet her gaze. "Why wouldn't you like it about yourself?" you say. "It's a great chin. It goes very nicely with your smile.

"And you said I was thin as a rail – that wasn't an insult, was it, ma'am?" Your voice is tiny, even for you; you can barely feel your vocal cords fluttering as you speak.

There is a brief, silent gap before Mama Lipsky allows you a peek of that smile again. Her lips are small and shaped like Earth insects – _butterflies_ , Steven told you once – and somehow that is the perfect word for when that pink-glossed surface spreads happily and leaves you riveted.

Dr. Drakken lets out a long, heavy breath. You don't need to, but you can feel the terse pressure of your wings fade away from the surface.

You sink into a chair far smaller and less ornate than the ones at Blue Diamond's palace. If your feet don't quite reach the floor, your knees at least have the chance to bend. Drakken sits on one side of you, Mama Lipsky on the other.

Just as Drakken predicted, there are three utensils arranged around the curves of your plate, silver in color if not construction, with identical gripping handles. On the left, tucked into the _napkin_ Drakken described to you, is one with individual spines; it must be the _fork_. On the right sits one whose taper is not as wickedly sharp as you feared – the _knife_. And the one next to the knife, the one with the dipped, rounded end, you recognize from breakfast as a _spoon_.

"Now, you just go ahead and dig in," Mama Lipsky says.

You spend an instant looking for a shovel before concluding that she must mean something else. Drakken bounces in his seat and thunders, "That means it's time to _eat_!"

Mama Lipsky picks up the enormous platter with the slabs of meat on it and holds it out toward you. It is a solid, so you tentatively select your fork and glance at Drakken. He nods to you, turning his thumb upward, his signal for, _Yes, that's good_. Still unsure, you spear the tines into one slab, half expecting the animal it was once was to squeal at you.

It doesn't, of course, and you pull it onto your plate, with a horrible scraping sound that grates into the deepest facets of your gem but leaves only a minor trail of glaze on the table. Drakken gives you the thumbs'-up again.

The slab is much too big to shove into your mouth, so you lift your knife, taking great care to keep your fingerprints wide of the blade that could damage them, remembering Drakken's warning. Your right hand, still holding the fork, pins the meat in place as you scratch the knife across with your left. In spite of the shrieking that leads Dr. Drakken to cover his ears, you manage to wrench a respectable strip of meat from the slab and saw it into small pieces.

Mama Lipsky watches you, her eyes continuing to probe. You wonder what the consequences will be if you do not meet her standards; while you know they will be nothing compared to what would surely await you back on Homeworld, you still fear her rejection, more and more acutely each time she caresses Drakken with a glance.

"I see you're a lefty, too, my dear?" Mama Lipsky asks.

You stare at your utensils. Your brain is too stiffened to find a reply, not even one of the sarcastic ones that have started to come more and more easily to you since letting Jasper in.

"Ambidextrous, actually," Drakken says. You think there is pride in the way he says it. When you rip the word's many sounds apart, it seems to mean that both of your hands are equally strong – which would make sense.

"Fascinating," Mama Lipsky says.

You relax somewhat – it does not matter which hand you use. You lift a scrap of meat to your mouth and bite into it.

It is good, better than you expected. It tastes of smoke, but not the smoke of the battlefield. This smoke is rich and juicy, carefully controlled by the sticky sweetness of whatever trickles across its top. The texture has tight weaving, firm without being too hard to chew. Your mouth slackens from the surprise, and you hastily swallow the pieces before they can fall back out.

When you look at Dr. Drakken, you understand where the phrase "dig in" originated. He is stuffing the food in at a rate that would suggest he _is_ using a shovel. He has clearly had much more practice than you.

Mama Lipsky also shovels, though she's somewhat daintier about it. With her food slipped neatly into her cheek, she says, "So, tell me a little about yourself, my dear."

What is there to tell?

It would mean nothing to Drakken's mother that you used to be among the upper echelon of Gems, and you yourself have trouble remembering those days, anyway. As much as it hurts to accept it, Homeworld is no longer your home; your essence there is now a memory, a nebula, redistributed among the new bright stars that rise up to take its place.

Your imprisonment feels trivial by comparison. And so when Mama Lipsky follows up her first question with, "What have you been up to lately?", you rush forward to greet it:

"Well," you say. "I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years, but my friend Steven got me out. Then I met your son. He's very nice. And then I was stuck at the bottom of the ocean for six months."

Mama Lipsky's fork stops moving. She peers at Drakken over her glasses frames. Without so much as a rustle of sound, her lips make the words, _Are you sure about her?_

Panic nips between your shoulder blades. Drakken dispels it instantly – his own lips say _YES_ , and then he reaches over and gives your hand another squeeze.

There is strength when your fingers meet, strength that neither tiny set can possibly have.

It is the strength you need when Mama Lipsky suddenly bores down on you like an Injector. "Five thousand years…" she mutters. "Doesn't that make you a little old for my Drewbie?"

Your bent knees lock. You could ask what it means to be "old for" someone, but it would be more a stall than anything. There is a wrinkle pursed sharply above Mama Lipsky's nose, also so much like Drakken's, and it needs no interpretation.

"Well," you say again, "Gems don't grow and age the way humans do. In many ways, I'm exactly the same today as I was when I was first made."

Your words emerge much as you did that first day – unsteady yet awaiting and astounded. You remember awakening, pushing through a thin layer of silt and rubble, finding yourself beneath a gorgeous, bedazzled sky that imbued you with an instant sense of belonging. You ran after it; then you buckled, fell.

Another Gem caught you. She was shorter than you, but her legs were stockier, hardier, when yours felt as filmy as the haze you blinked from newly formed eyes. "Steady there," she whispered to you, with a smile you didn't need to see to identify. "Lean on me until you get those wobbly legs under control."

These are the kinds of ties you don't wish to sever – and yet you can't quite recall what variety of Gem she was.

Dr. Drakken speaks up then, yanking your focus back to your age, which you never realized could be such a divisive subject. "We're both adults, Mother, and our maturities are compatible," he huffs, as though pestered.

There is an uncanny silence.

Mama Lipsky breaks it by saying, "Ohhh, so _that_ 's why Drewbie went and hid all my mirrors!" The wrinkle disappears in a wash of sympathy. "I thought you just had terrible self-image or something."

You don't know how to reply to that, so you simply give her a submissive smile.

Something makes a _ding_ noise from the back corner of the room, which you think you heard Steven once call a _kitchen_. Mama Lipsky says, "Oh, the peas are done!", hurries to the distant countertop and returns holding a clear container that resembles a bowl, only with tall sides and a lid. Mist beads on the outside glass, so the contents – small, round, dark green objects – must be hot.

"Can we eat those?" you ask.

Drakken tosses his head back and chuckles as if you've taken another turn tickling him. "Yes, Lapis, those are edible! They're _peas_ , actually, which are a vegetable, which means they're really good for…well, good for _humans_."

You accept a serving and then slice another row of meat and then cut it to bites, angling the knife's tip ever so slightly upward. It doesn't make that ugly scraping sound this time, and you feel the corners of your mouth steal upward.

"This is really good meat," you say politely – and truthfully. "What animal is it?"

"Oh, this is fresh ham, straight from Middleton Grocers," Mama Lipsky says.

You've never heard of a _ham_. They must be native to a different region of the planet.

"And the honey glaze is a recipe that's been passed down for generations," Mama Lipsky says.

Generations. For some reason that clutches at your throat, and you stare down at your plate. You wonder which of the early human civilizations you observed at the start of your visit wound up settling down and creating Mama Lipsky, raising wild hams and teaching her how to glaze them with honey.

"Well, your generations sure know how to make a mean honey glaze," you say.

Mama Lipsky shows you the barest hint of a frown.

"A good one!" you hasten to clarify. "You see, Dr. Drakken taught me that _mean_ doesn't always have to do with how you treat people –"

"Yes, speaking of how you treat people…" Mama Lipsky lays one arm across the tabletop, though it isn't long enough to meet yours. "Have you been good to my boy?"

The sudden rise in her body heat spells a distinct, if subdued, threat. You have no trouble whatsoever picturing her pulling her own broad-brimmed sword, the same hue as her hair, from the animal-skin bag on the back of her chair and running you through.

"Yes?" you say. Wet leaves drizzle across your memory; you push them away.

"Moth-er!" Drakken's voice pulls taut. "Are you just doing this because she's an alien?"

"Of course not!" Mama Lipsky taps her fork importantly against her plate. There is the same crank to her jaw that you feel in yours whenever you imagine Steven in danger, and it only compounds the wanting for this woman to be a part of your life. "There have been a lot of people, human people, who have mistreated my Drewbie. He's had his heart broken many a time –"

Your mind immediately spirals to the wounded staggering back to Homeworld with damaged Gems, some hairline cracks, others held together only by the finest sliver of stone. Humans can survive broken legs, you know, but the heart is a vital organ. The kitchen walls seem to slam together, trapping you in between.

"Your heart's cracked?" you say to Dr. Drakken. "Why didn't you tell me? Is it bad? Let me listen!"

You lean your head against his chest and hear only the roar echoing through you. "Should I get you to Steven?" and even as you say it, you don't know if Steven can remedy it. How is he supposed to lick a human heart, inside a human chest?

"Lapis!"

Dr. Drakken's arms lash forward as though to grab you, before rocking back and deciding to tilt your chin instead. His face is flushed. The comical wiggle of his ears brings you back, breaks the riptide's hold on you, and you feel your own cheeks stripe a darker color to match your hair.

"Symbolic heart?" you nearly whisper.

"Yes," Drakken says. "Symbolic heart." Not unkindly, he nudges back into the chair every bit of you that has overstepped it. "Eat your peas."

This seems your best option. You lift your fork and bring it down, but the peas reel away nervously from you; spearing one is like trying to catch a shore-bird with your hands alone.

"It's been a real problem for him," Mama Lipsky continues, as if nothing has happened since her last sentence. "Ever since he was a toddler, and that one little girl –"

Drakken speaks much too quickly – "No, no, no, no, no, no, not Lapis! She's been great. Not perfect, of course, but then, who is, right?" He throws in a laugh at the end that is not his real laugh: it is a crater, deep and empty.

This silence is undecided, and you can hardly bear it.

"I'm really sorry about all that," Drakken continues. "To her species, broken means – _kkkkk_!" He draws a finger across his throat.

You target another pea. It rolls away as well, and the tines of your fork hit your plate with a smack that you feel in your hollow parts. They could easily be the robot probes Peridot first sent to Earth, had they legs and a somewhat lighter tint.

"Oh? Lapis?" Dr. Drakken says. "You might want to use your spoon for those."

You do not blush, not this time. The buoy-words bob as he talks, untouched by the undertow of exasperation. "But they're solids," you say.

Drakken flinches from the neck down. "Yes, well – I forgot to put a little disclaimer on that. Peas _are_ solids, but they're so small and so squishy that even if you caught one, it would just – spppppt!" He indicates an eruption of goo, which also reminds you of Peridot's probes. "You can go ahead and use a spoon."

You nod your thanks, pick up your spoon, and aim it for the peas. It dashes off the slippery surface of your plate. "It'd be so much easier if this were a bowl," you say as your vision narrows, shutting out everything except the peas.

Dr. Drakken grunts and scrapes his chair back from the table, leaning his torso across to you. "And your knife! Your knife can help! You can just use the back of it to redirect the peas, like this…"

Bony hands settle over your own. The right curls your fingers around the spoon and leaves it on one side of the plate, bowed and waiting. The left lifts the knife, rotates it so that the blade points to the ceiling, and then pinches the handle between your fingers. With his tongue-tip dangling from the edge of his lips, Drakken uses the harmless side of the knife to gather the peas into a herd; separate a few individuals; and coax them, in delicate imprecision, into the slope of your spoon.

The warm grip releases you, and there is a genuine chuckle now as Drakken returns to his own plate and replicates the trick with one broad sweep of his – which promptly scatters peas in every direction, sending a few spilling over the plate and launching at least one toward the ceiling. Peridot had more control over her artificial limb enhancers than this man does over his own natural limbs. He is a pleasure to watch.

That is when you sense someone watching _you_. You turn to glimpse Mama Lipsky. Her napkin is up over the lower half of her face, and her eyes twinkle with the same boundless possibilities as her son's.

Drakken mumbles some aggravated nonsense under the consistent _whoosh_ of his breathing, which seems to give you permission to giggle and rub his back. One tiny pea has rolled in front of your own plate, and you pick it up with your fingers and flick it through the air toward the direction of Drakken's mouth. He, amazingly, catches it, green at the corners of his smile, and the feeling of something near home surrounds you.

Mama Lipsky stands, hoisting the bowl of green-flecked yellow mush. "Are you two ready for some potato salad? It's just the way you like it, Drewbie – with the chopped gherkins."

You wonder what gherkins are.

"Are we ever!" Drakken answers. He leans forward, restless elbows braced on the table, as if he has been invited to drink from the universe's reserves.

You are therefore surprised when, per Drakken's advice, you spoon a sample into your mouth. The texture is lumpy, like the curdled cliffs of Kindergarten Base 41, and the lumps have a sour crunch to them that your tongue is quick to reject.

Your throat begins to work; fortunately, your mind works faster. As soon as Mama Lipsky is looking elsewhere, you raise a napkin to your lips with your greatest degree of nonchalance and release the burdensome little lumps.

Mama Lipsky takes a large bite of the mush. "So, Lapis –" your name seems to gush from her mouth in the same way as everything else she's said, as though it is somehow liquid – "what do you think of Earth?"

Your spoonful of peas changes direction in midair and settles back on your plate. "Um," you say. Mama Lipsky's eyes are trusting, even gullible, and for this exact reason you cannot lie to her. And yet to burst forth with your first assessment of Earth – as a miserable, backward planet where the grass only exists in one color; where the environment is so easily battered by hurricanes and tropical storms; where nothing can both fly _and_ carry on a conversation – seems not only poor judgment, but inaccurate as well.

Reflections and others' borrowed words arise in your head before your own voice, as is customary for you. You reach deep inside yourself, under layers of glass stained by Jasper, to grasp, one by one, the points you want to make.

"Um," you repeat. "It has its good points. Most of the humans seem really nice." You exchange a look with Dr. Drakken, whose glow is more radiant than a Peridot's gem. "And I like that the leaves change color with the seasons. We don't have that on my planet.

"But –" you tear your gaze away from the one to which you cannot lie – "I like my home planet better. I'm –" You stop the apology, wipe it from your mind; you will not apologize for loyalty to Homeworld.

Although you are seeing the tabletop, it is as if you have a second sight, and it is fixed on the sky when you first saw it: the endless span of stars, the swirl of distant galaxies, pinned in place by the dark knobs of planets. Beckoning you.

Mama Lipsky chews thoughtfully. "Well, of course you do," she says, surprising you with the statement. "Your first home is always going to have a special place in your heart. Me, I was born on a little farm in Illinois. Cutest little farmhouse you'll ever seen, and such a nice barn! Grew up learning how to milk cows and…"

She has the sound of a shorebird cawing its gratitude for the few scraps of food it has been fed, but underneath the screeching you can hear her son's buoyancy. You glance up at him, and he nods several times and mouths, _THIS IS GOOD_.

You swivel back toward Mama Lipsky and reenter the conversation as graciously as you can. "You know, I live on a farm now, actually."

"Do you, now?"

"Yeah. Well….we've got a barn. And a lot of grass. No animals, though. There aren't any cows or hams or any of that." There is only Peridot, and to explain who she is might be impossible. _You_ aren't even sure who she is anymore.

You stick another piece of ham into your mouth. That is when you notice Mama Lipsky is surveying your plate, more narrowly than you are comfortable with. "You've hardly touched your potato salad, Lapis. Do you not care for it?"

The walls of the kitchen constrict, and you slam your palms down on the table before you can let yourself be trapped again. You return to your earlier talk with Dr. Drakken and seize a term you understand. "What I thought of the potato salad is…irrelevant," you say.

Mama Lipsky's lips part like a butterfly's wings flapping open. "Irrelevant?" she says.

"That's what I was supposed to say, right?" You glance to Dr. Drakken for confirmation, but to no avail. The skin on his cheeks is stretched tightly, so tightly that the bones of them are gouging the air. He is scared.

Strangely, you are not, because you haven't yet seen Drakken fear so strongly for himself when you are at risk. You turn to Mama Lipsky again and finish, "What's relevant is getting you to love me."

Mama Lipsky's eyes close and remain closed for so long you worry you might have stunned her into sleep. Then they open again, and you realize it was just the longest blink you have ever seen from a human. They are wet and sparkly, the sun on the sea.

"Wait – you _didn't_ like the potato salad?" Drakken asks, agape.

Mama Lipsky pins him with a sharp look before softening it back to you. "I'm sorry," she gushes. "I just didn't know what foods you liked."

"Oh, that's okay," you say, smiling. "I don't know, either."

Mama Lipsky tips her body toward you and gathers one of your hands between her two claylike ones. When she speaks, the gushing has tamed to a trickle that flows cleanly across her low, generous tone. "What's the name of your planet, honey?"she asks.

Now she is likening you to the ham's glaze, and given its legacy and its savory sweetness, it _must_ be a compliment.

"Homeworld. We call it Homeworld," you whisper.

And for the first time, you know where a symbolic heart lives, because you can feel the ache of rampant memories in your center.

"Ohhh, that is _lovely_!" Mama Lipsky says. The squeal is back as she clasps her hands at her waist. "My, they're doing such _wonderful_ things with exchange programs these days! And here I thought it was impressive when they sent that boy to Japan…"

You have no idea where Japan is, though you can guess it is nowhere as far as Homeworld.

"No, actually, I'm in exile," you say. To your discomfort, Mama Lipsky's face melts into anguish you wouldn't have wished upon her. "But it's okay," you add. "I'm fin –" Again you stop. "I mean, your son has helped me a lot."

Dr. Drakken bows his head in humility, a gesture that appears unpracticed on him.

"I just bet he has. My Drewbie's a good boy." Mama Lipsky makes no attempt to hide her smugness. Everything in your being winds toward it, caught in a circle around it, and you decide this must be how _hunger_ feels.

You set your own hands in your lap. "So…is it okay that I'm an alien?" you ask. You once again have the body-quaking sensation of standing before Blue Diamond, waiting for her to either consecrate or condemn you.

Mama Lipsky grins, her teeth so much smaller than Drakken's. "You know, dear, I've been waiting a long time for Drewbie to bring a girl home to meet me," she says.

It can't have been _too_ long, since he is only forty-two years old. You do not bring this up, however. Mama Lipsky already seems unnerved by the fact that you are older than many of Earth's landmarks.

"Now… here you are." Mama Lipsky taps the tabletop with a squared, regal fingernail, completely unlike the straggly ones Drakken frequently gnaws. "And I guess I should have always known that the woman for him would be a touch unconventional."

 _The woman for him._ The words seep into your gem, nestling around your wings, drawing you closer, not defining but illuminating a self that has been silent and uncertain since splitting from Jasper.

You murmur your thanks and duck your head. The curved edge of your spoon bounces light back at you, and it occurs to you that it would launch a projectile very nicely. Were Steven here, you would shoot some peas his way to make him giggle huskily. But this is Mama Lipsky, and your bond with her is a thread scarcely woven, prone to snap if not tended with uncompromising care.

She's looking at you now, eyeing you over the last slice of ham left on your plate. "You'll be spending your nights here," she says.

This is the first you've heard of that. You glance toward Dr. Drakken, who shrugs the entire left side of his body. "It's the gentlemanly thing to do," he says.

His wide, simple tone plunges all questions back into the depths of your mind. For as easy as it was to picture Mama Lipsky shattering anyone who harms her son, you feel strangely secure in the woman's presence.

Mama Lipsky tweaks the small rectangle of cloth that rests under her plate and utensils. "The couch folds out into a bed," she says, "or you can just sleep on it as a couch. Or…do you need a bed? You can have my bed, and _I_ can take the couch."

For a moment, your thoughts are so busy with her generosity – and with trying to imagine how that sloping couch in the next room can extend into furniture that will support a mattress like Steven slept on – that her actual question doesn't sink in fully.

When it does, you shake your head. "That's okay," you say. "I actually don't need to sleep."

You wait for the understanding to ripple across Mama Lipsky's face, but she sends your words sailing away with her hand. "Oh, pish-posh. Everybody needs to sleep," she says.

She speaks with such conviction that you are almost persuaded, and yet the life-force in you refuses to be slighted by her error. "No, really," you say. "My species, physically, we don't need to –"

A reedy human finger pokes your elbow. You glance up at Dr. Drakken, who is wagging his head, experience carved around his eyes.

You let your shoulders fall in resignation. "The couch will be fine," you finish. You are certainly not going to allow this woman to give up her bed, not for you, not for a sleep that will never come.

"Wonderful!" Mama Lipsky continues to beam, as though you have just constructed a shrine to her. Her smile, a miniaturization of Drakken's, seamlessly closes any communication gap. You return it and take your final appreciative bites of ham.

So this is how it is to have food in you. You feel rather like an hourglass that has long since been turned over, clumps of sand drained into your previous vacancies. The feeling isn't uncomfortable, but it is unfamiliar.

Mama Lipsky whisks your plates off the table and announces it is time for dessert – which, she explains, is the last part of the meal; Dr. Drakken whispers to you that it is also the _best_ part.

There is such enormity in his pronunciation that your wings rustle nervously. When Mama Lipsky returns, though, carrying a blue tub with the words VANILLA ICE CREAM stamped on the front, you grip the chair handles in glee.

Mama Lipsky peels the sides of the snugly fitted lid away from the tub's corners. Another food smell fills the room, and this one you recognize: cold and thick and subtle. You draw in a breath scented with it, and it manipulates time more efficiently than your people's experimental device, transporting you back to summertime – a tranquil beach, an outstretched hand, an invitation to share the day with another living being.

Drakken stands to help his mother immerse what resembles a cave-throated spoon into the ice cream and drop a mound into one of the bowls she brought with her, bowls chipped and stained yet clinging resolutely to their class. Your grin, once as outdated and weed-buried as the ancient Gem ship abandoned in Earth's wilderness, returns hearty and natural.

"Ice cream?" you say, rather pointlessly, as Drakken scoops out another mound for you, then two more for himself.

A whole conversation flows between the looks Drakken and his mother exchange. "I heard you like it," Mama Lipsky says.

"I do."

And then you frown down at your bowl, wondering what decorum dictates; this was never part of your Teaching. Dr. Drakken lapped his up with his tongue that first day, but it was balanced on a sugar cone then, and so for several moments you merely sit there, noting the many near-invisible ridges in the mounds one scant shade removed from the white bowl, the way it swoops up into a peak at the top like a sand dune. When Drakken lifts his spoon and chips away a chunk of the ice cream, you immediately do the same.

"Now, what I'm curious about," Mama Lipsky says, "is how you know you like _this_ , Lapis."

You slip a spoonful between your lips, and it is every bit as wonderful as you remember it. This is a story that deserves to be told; it could do both your planets much good.

"Well," you begin, "when I first met your son, he got some ice cream and he let me taste it." Dr. Drakken is watching you as you talk, as if you are still a mirror playing back the memories, memories that bring him as much joy as the silly noise you blow on your palm brings Steven. "I'd never tasted anything so sweet.

"He and Steven were my only Earth friends." The spoon becomes weighty and stiff as lead as you picture the expressions – darkened by time, hardened by indifference, erased by war – of those you once called friends on Homeworld. "And no one had ever offered me food before."

The thunder of Drakken's chuckle is tinged with sun at its edges, as Steven has told you occasionally happens with Earth's strange weather. "Oh, let me tell you, mothers will _never_ stop offering you food," he says.

He apparently delights in the prospect. You are less sure. You swivel back toward Mama Lipsky again, and you look into that face which you cannot bring dishonesty before. "Well, I can't say I'll always accept," you say, "because I'm still not used to eating. But thank you."

You have said this phrase – _thank you_ – multiple times now, and you wish there were a sturdier, intensified version. What it invokes, what rises like flight from the center of your gem, is much too big for this one.

Mama Lipsky winks at you, as though you are part of a secret together. "You're quite welcome."

Despite the cold trickling down your throat, you feel nothing but warmth as she settles her hips into her own seat behind the table. "So, Lapis" – her voice secretes your name like the soothing moisture in tissues – "do you have any questions about Earth?"

"As a matter of fact" – you glance from Mama Lipsky to her significantly larger son, and then back to her and her puffed hairdo and her butterfly mouth – "yeah." You swallow your next bite of ice cream. "How did Dr. Drakken come out of you?"

Petals burst from Drakken's neck.

Mama Lipsky's pliable skin startles a little and then almost immediately softens at you. "Wonderful question!"

You cross and uncross your legs, uncertain where it goes from here. On Homeworld, good questions were the only ones worth answering, but from what you've observed of Earth, _good question_ appears to mean _I don't have an answer._

Mama Lipsky's concept must be nearer to your people's. She rises from her chair and leaves the room with an assurance that she'll be right back, and she _does_ return promptly, holding a short-spined book which she pushes across the table toward you, its pages long and graceful as a Pearl's limbs. "This is the book I used with Drewbie," she says.

Drakken's petals have fluffed out to fringe his blush in silken, pale-yellow folds. He gets to his feet so rapidly that he bangs one foot against the base of his chair and hardly spares a distant yelp for the pain. "If anyone needs me, I'll be going to the bathroom for a really long time," he calls back as he scuttles down the hall.

You've been meaning to ask, as well, exactly what it is humans _do_ in a bathroom, but for now Mama Lipsky and her strange book monopolize your attention. The pictures in it, though awash in lovely colors, seem more what you are accustomed to from Homeworld's books – instructive and precise, with none of the whimsy from the book about the giant red dog. You find yourself straightening your posture to something alert, something poised.

"Well, for starters," Mama Lipsky gushes, "humans are very small when they're born." She turns the elongated pages slowly; her smile is a morning dew. "My Drewbie was six pounds exactly."

Oh. So she didn't produce Drakken at his current size.

"Six pounds – is that normal?" you ask.

"It's…petite," Mama Lipsky says, "but not unusually so." She pats an area below her waist. "Now, babies grow in a part of the mother called the _womb_."

Rose must have shapeshifted one of those.

"And usually after nine months, when the baby is ready, it'll start traveling down what's called the _birth canal_ …"

She walks you through the rest of the process, as an illustrated baby is thrust into the world by his mother's strength, in one picture as reddened and wrinkle-lined as Drakken once described to you, calming into a pink bundle of beauty in the next. You are transfixed: this is where Dr. Drakken came from. Maybe Steven, too.

One word snags in your mind.

"You said _usually_ when the baby is ready…" you say.

"Oh, yes." Mama Lipsky folds the plump neat hands with a touch of sadness. "Some babies arrive before they're ready. That's called being _premature_. Usually, they're very sick, and they need a lot of help from the doctors before they can go home."

"So you do it in a place with doctors?" you say.

"Yes. Most women give birth in a hospital."

You feel yourself brighten. "That's where Dr. Drakken went when he cut his face, right?"

"Yes, it is!" Mama Lipsky says delightedly. "You see, birth is a very delicate process, and there are many ways it can go wrong." She visits you with that conspiratorial look again and does not seem bothered that you can only return it with blankness. "They don't show it in the book – because who wants to look at that? – but it's rather messy even when it does go right."

Messy?

You can almost picture the white Pearl pursing up with disapproval. A question pops up as you wave her image away:

"Does it hurt?"

"Dear goodness me, _yes_!" Mama Lipsky's forehead crimps. "Childbirth is one of the worst pains a human can experience."

You cringe, and you wonder if the many colonized planets felt that type of pain, their life pulsating from them to strengthen the next wave of Gems. The last of your ice cream doesn't go down all the way with one swallow.

"But don't worry, dear," Mama Lipsky says. Her strident voice rubs, untangles, as though she can sense distress in you. "Believe it or not, once I saw my little Drewbie, I forgot the pain _completely_. He made it all worth it."

You do believe it. You believe it because every time you look at Steven, all of your rancid memories of Malachite scatter like ash. He is most assuredly worth it.

And yet Steven is not here now, and _she_ swims unbidden through your mind, and although your temperature can't be affected by the draft leaking in through the window, that doesn't mean you don't know what it means to be chilled.

You lock onto Mama Lipsky's intractable compassion, let it seek you out, before you can knot up like a fishing wire. "What was Dr. Drakken like…as a baby?" you ask.

Watching Mama Lipsky descend into the past is like watching her son's vines burst into blossom. "He was quiet for a baby. Oh, sure, he'd babble and cry like any baby, but I always got the feeling his mind was on bigger things. He watched everything so _closely_. You could just see how eager he was to learn, even back them, bless his heart.

"He was clingy – you wouldn't know it from how scared he is to be touched now. And shy. He'd be friendly with others as long as he could still see me. Once I was gone, though, that was when the tantrums started. And he had so much hair and such beautiful long eyelashes that everyone we met thought he was a girl." She shakes her head fondly.

You aren't sure if you follow that logic – you're a girl, and you have shorter hair and stubbier lashes than Drakken – and yet you like to imagine him as a six-pound baby snuggling with his mother, innocent of what is still to come.

"Thank you," you say, "for telling me."

The whole kitchen seems to be filled with Mama Lipsky's smiling, welcoming face, the face like her son's, the shape of a hen's egg. Blue Diamond's expression disappears behind her veil. "You are most welcome," Mama Lipsky says.

You stir the liquid from the remainder of your ice cream and hope with every bite of food in your stomach that this is a time when humans mean exactly what they say.

Kneeling on your seat, you call out, "All right, Dr. Drakken! We're done! You can come back out!"

There is that large _whoosh_ noise that bathrooms always make when humans are done with them, and it matches the sigh of relief you can hear coming from Drakken. He wanders, still rather flushed, back to his dish. The ice cream has lost its form by now but apparently not its flavor, for Drakken still happily slurps up the rest of it, even though he is more drinking it than eating it.

Having never completed a meal before, you follow Dr. Drakken's lead: you take your bowl to the sink, rinse it with a stream of lukewarm water, and place it in a large square maw known as a _dishwasher_. Drakken explains that, later, someone will fill it with soap and set it to churn so that scraps of food and germs are knocked from the dishes and washed away.

The three of you leave the kitchen for the living room. Mama Lipsky sits on the sunken sofa cushion farthest to the left, and Drakken straddles the fluffier right side. The funny wave of his toes just centimeters above the brittle carpet sends glee traveling down your back.

You sink down next to him, facing Mama Lipsky. Your eyelids suddenly want to bat, fiercely, as though there is something under them.

"Well, Lapis, did you enjoy your dinner?" Mama Lipsky says. She radiates warmth; you feel like a probe hovering just inside the atmosphere, scouring for what you are purposed to find.

"It was the best dinner I've ever had." You pause. "It was also the first."

Mama Lipsky laughs, a sound akin to the trill of a happy dolphin.

You pull your legs up on the couch before you, taking shelter behind your knees. "So you've probably figured out by now that Gems don't have families the way humans do," you begin.

Mama Lipsky's new noise is sympathetic.

"Families are one of the things I like best about Earth," you say. "And Dr. Drakken taught me that families aren't just made by giving birth – that people can choose their own families."

This is it. You smooth your skin before aligning your fingers in your lap and breathing:

"So – could I – ?"

You are interrupted by Mama Lipsky's hand on your cheek. There is something profound in her touch, a privilege the Diamonds themselves have never known.

"Sweetheart, as long as my Drewbie loves you – you will always have a place in this house," she says.

Water collects in your eyes for the second time in two days, and you lower your lashes to entrap it there, limp-kneed in relief. You don't know whether your relationship with Drakken will always be what is today, but you have the stark feeling that Dr. Drakken is not the type of person to stop loving someone.

All too soon, it is time for Mama Lipsky to prepare for bed. Drakken whips the cushions dramatically off the couch to reveal a hinge in its underbelly that he yanks outward to form a box of springs and braces. Unrolling it from its doubled-up position reveals what you recognize as a mattress. You don't like the look of the thing; you shake your head at it, and Drakken huffs and puffs it back into the sofa and conceals it with cushions again.

The sky, framed by streaked windows, matches your hair, right down to the choppiness of the cloudbank. It blocks the view that always raises homesickness at your edges. You move closer to Dr. Drakken until you hit the protrusion of his hipbone.

"You know," he says, "I've been meaning to ask you…how do you know what flirting is?"

"Well, you see a lot of things from inside a mirror," you say, surprised by the relative ease with which you say the long-hated word. "Garnet used to sit in front of it all the time and flirt with herself. And – I think it was the Sapphire part of her that called it 'flirting.'"

Drakken looks at you quizzically. "Oh. Right. The fusion. My – what a – unique experience!"

You snort a little. "You don't have to try to be polite about it. It was really weird. And I don't miss it."

It's then that you are left to wonder: would even Garnet, as proud as she is of her rebellion, flaunt it so boldly in front of a mirror where she _knew_ a Homeworld Gem was trapped?

Drakken chuckles, a wet sound like one that precedes a cough. "All right, thank you. That is, as Shego would say, 'high-end bizarre.'"

He has promised to introduce you to the cherished Shego tomorrow. But first you must make it through tonight.

And while even you are not selfish enough to deny Dr. Drakken the sleep he needs to function, you would rather spend a little while longer gossiping about the Crystal Gems.

"When they first brought Amethyst to the temple – which was only a few thousand years ago – she didn't like wearing clothes," you confide. "She used to shapeshift them off and run around the house bare."

Although Drakken blushes slightly again, his laughter is deep, as though it comes from the heart of a star. It is near impossible not to laugh along.

You rock forward, knees stationed at your chin to retain the warmth inside you. "Pearl always rehearsed everything she was planning to do that day.

"She went through this phase when toothpaste was first invented. She bought a whole big jar of it and she'd use it every single day, even though she never ate anything. She thought it was so great that they'd finally come up with a way to clean your mouth," you say.

Dr. Drakken's shoulders are shaking merrily when Mama Lipsky returns with a pillow and a blue-checkered blanket, which she drops on the sofa beside you. They both give placidly under your fingertips, and yet you recoil from them anyway.

"Is she really going to make me sleep?" you ask once Mama Lipsky has left again.

"Well, I mean – she can't _make_ you." Drakken pulls a corner of the blanket onto his lap. "But she'll never buy that you don't need to. It'd be best if you just faked it until she falls asleep."

"I don't want to lie down." You are so consumed with keeping your pitch from the boundaries of whining that you fail to check its quiver.

The corners of Drakken's mouth quirk, one up, one down, scrambling the skin. "What's wrong? Is it – are you scared of _Jasper_?" He whispers the name, as though the two harsh syllables will shatter you. "Because she'd never think to look for you here."

You are tossed back and forth between gratitude for his consideration and irritation for the weakness of yours that requires it.

"No, it isn't about Jasper." You throw the two syllables back at him to show you are no longer at their whim. "I just – don't want to sleep. I only ever slept once, and it wasn't any fun. I had all these awful…shows in my head. Reflections that never happened; ones I couldn't control." You press both hands to your temples.

"Bad dreams?" Drakken says.

The term is vicious in its realness. It was false history, all of it: Jasper misappropriating your powers to destroy Steven; Blue Diamond with her fist clenched, sentencing you as she sentenced the Ruby half of Garnet; everything more distorted than the view through your wings, sky a hateful red, ground the wrong texture – and yet it lives in you, pinning you to the ground. You press your fingers more tightly to stem the tide.

"I'm rather an expert on those." A shudder passes through Dr. Drakken, rifling the collar on his coat-of-labs. "And since you don't _need_ to sleep – Gahhh, I wish _I_ had that option. I used to try anyway, but I always wound up conking out on top of my desk….usually with something flammable in my hand."

You gasp, and then he pats his head light-heartedly and says, "Luckily my hair grows back fast," and your gasp turns to a giggle.

"There are good dreams, too, Lapis," Drakken says.

The words crunch in your head the way the potato salad crunched on your tongue. "But how can you stand it when you wake up and you know it isn't real?"

Drakken considers that for a moment, hanging on to the same breath until his cheeks narrow. "Well, a temper tantrum isn't the most efficient reaction, but it can be quite satisfying!"

Your body feels more a trick of light than ever, and you touch Drakken's hand to make certain you are still solid.

"Dreams in general are sort of unnatural for a Gem, anyway," you say. "The only time we see things that aren't real is when we're in an unstable fusion." You know your face is sending out a plea too desperate to be vocalized. Although you can say Jasper's name and not fall apart, invoking Malachite's will certainly rot you from the inside out.

Drakken frowns. "Unst – Ohhhh. Oh! Well, sensically – I mean, of natural, I mean – that makes perfect sense! Well, then, of course you don't want to!"

"Some of our researchers think corrupted Gems see fake things, too," you relay off-handedly. It is one horror to which you cannot relate.

Receiving the fact doesn't bring the scientific lightening to Drakken's eyes this time. In fact, they thrash from side to side, and the rest of his body follows as he cries, "I'll be right back!" and shoots from the sofa. You hear the low bounce of his voice, a few minor crashes, and then he is there again, holding an object that he describes as his mother's cell phone. This makes sense, too; it has the same compact flip, though the shell he presses into your palm is silvered rather than black.

Drakken's thumb wanders, aimless, over your knuckles, unsure of anything except its care for you. "If you get too 'freaked out,' as the teens today say, you can call me."

You stare at this package of flimsy human energy. "But what if it wakes you up?"

"Oh, pshaw!" Drakken sounds humorously like his mother as he tips his head back. "I've woken so many people up in the middle of the night before – now it's my turn!"

He stops with a finger suspended in the air. "Is – did I say that correctly? Am I supposed to say that I'd be delighted to hear from you at any hour of the night?"

You blink. "I have no idea."

There is silence, save for the grinding of the dishwasher.

"Well, I guess I can try for a little while…" You rotate the phone in your hands. "Does your mother fall asleep fast?"

Dr. Drakken's eyes crinkle into tiny slits. "Almost as fast as my hair grows back."

You place the pillow on the couch's side, roll the blanket back, and slowly slide what you believe is called your _tailbone_ to a place of rest against the cushions. Almost immediately, it turns to straw beneath you, and the food in your midsection flexes. You give Dr. Drakken a smile, though you imagine it is as tepid as the cove where Jasper eventually seized dominance.

He sniffs and wipes at the bottom of his nose. "Would it help if I sung you a lullaby?" he says.

"What's a lullaby?" you ask.

"It's a song you sing to help someone else fall asleep."

"Oh. That's what those are called," you say. "Pearl sings those to Steven sometimes." And though you are still not sure how you feel about the white Pearl, she sings with a resonance that stirs your wings to soar. "Yes. Go ahead."

" _Lavender's blue –_ " Drakken begins, and then he shakes his head. "No, lavender is _lavender_. It had a whole color named after it, so why write a song where you call it another color?"

You draw up your feet so Drakken will have more room. Light from a small electric lamp at the end of the sofa twirls through his eyes, turning them reflective. Once again, you see yourself shining in a surface that cannot possibly contain all of you. But unlike in the mirror, you like how you look reflected in his eyes.

Drakken begins again:

 _Lapis is blue, dilly, dilly_

 _Emerald's green_

 _If I were king, dilly, dilly_

 _You'd be my queen_

 _Let the birds sing, dilly, dilly_

 _And the lambs play_

 _We shall be safe, dilly, dilly_

 _Out of harm's way_

The sweetness with which he sings is wholly expected; the quality is not. You knew his voice would be beautiful because it is his, but you are surprised at how well it handles the notes. It has a bit of a scratch to it, too, only nothing like Jasper's. Hers is sand in a fresh wound; Drakken's is the rough, warm feel of the barn's splintered wood.

He bends down and kisses the space between your eyebrows, the space he does not have, and you forget there have ever been other Lapis Lazulis.

"Good night," Drakken says, almost shyly. "I love you."

"Good night," you say. "I love you too."

Saying that reminds you of coral: building up naturally, piece by piece, over time –and yet it is still a wonder when you pass by one day, and there is a reef fully realized.

Dr. Drakken leaves, and you hear the front door lock shut behind him. Your fear has not vanished, but it has slunk meekly to a corner of yourself where it cowers. Though you still have no desire to fall asleep, you take one more look at your fingerprints in the lantern-light and find yourself capable of cozying beneath the blanket and listening to Mama Lipsky shuffle around in her bedroom.

Even after the shuffle stops and the space under the door goes dark – perhaps human sleep can be disrupted by light, even though it was never kind enough to penetrate your barricade of bad dreams – you only rise to your feet and walk a few paces away from the couch. You have no destination in mind other than the avoidance of further dreams.

This lean, wooden, windblown house – it does not feel like home, not yet. But for the time being, it is a place where you are more than content to stay.

 **~EDITED 11/29/2016 to fix unintentionally suggestive pea-eating.~**


	14. Introductions

**~Well, I finally got this puppy finished up! Lapis gets a chance to meet some of Drakken's friends and neighbors. Big thanks to all my readers - I'll go ahead and risk sounding sappy and say I really treasure your patience and support. Love ya guys!~**

You spend the next several silent hours flying around the high, slight eaves of Mama Lipsky's house.

The sky persists in being dark and too clouded for stars, heavy with the truth that all humans on this hemisphere have slipped away to sleep for the night. It's not a trigger for you, but it _is_ a lonely thread trailing down your back.

You land on the floor and your gaze lands as well – on a compact, well-glossed stack of pages: a _magazine_ is the term you've heard Drakken use. Its front cover shows pictures of people with symmetrical features and is crowned with the title, _Reader's Digest_.

Perhaps it is something to read as you digest.

Your thumb strolls through the magazine's pages. Though the creases at the corners suggest age, the date printed on the cover means nothing to you, and you realize with a sudden displacement that you have no idea how humans count their years.

There are articles inside – about how to get the most out of something called your _money_ ; about a movie who won an award from someone named Oscar; about a doctor many years ago who invented _incubators_ to warm and save the premature babies Mama Lipsky told you about. You flip another few pages and come to a page labeled "Quotable Quotes." The layout is anything but uniform, and one block of text in particular springs straight into your vision.

 _If you can laugh at it, it can't kill you,_ it reads.

You frown. Literally, this isn't true. If you laugh at a corrupted Gem monster, it can still kill you; someone like Jasper is probably _more_ likely to kill you if you laugh at her.

So it must be symbolic.

You pull your knees into the familiar knot and through the ragged hair that fringes your brow you peer at your toes. Their small neatness seems deceptive in the light of where they've been, what they've been part of.

And now that you are alone unoccupied, those things seem to surround you like a thicket of thorns – plants without blooms, without any hint of Drakken or Steven. You can almost feel one directly behind you, its claws on your neck, its point ready to perforate your gem, and you cannot allow it.

You speak aloud, though not loudly: "I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."

It does not make you laugh. In fact, you cringe, your backbone a piece of driftwood, your limbs tensed, your lips trembling.

But you are not shattered.

You speak again. "I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."

The coward you once were seizes you again and wads your face in fright. Only because no one is around to pity you do you allow it. Only the sightless seeds of Plastic's eyes are watching.

"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."

"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."

"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years."

As the night progresses, you do have the advantage of becoming blessedly numb, your pain nothing more than an alarm disabled by capable fingers. Yet by the time the first faint suggestions of light begin to play at the banks of the clouds, you still have found no humor in the statement.

Maybe it never becomes funny on its own. Maybe it needs to be helped along.

"I was trapped in a mirror for five thousand years." You pause. "I guess you could say that at least I had plenty of time to _reflect_."

Now you are not sure what's happening to you. Your body torques again, weakness teeming in the joints of your wrists. And yet no moisture is falling from your eyes, so you think you must be laughing.

* * *

Mama Lipsky is, thankfully, an early riser, and it is not too much later when her bedroom door opens and she walks out. Her skin is even more supple in appearance than last night, and it glistens as though she has rubbed it with the ice cream. Her pink hair smells of some type of sealant, though a few strands have fallen into endearing fuzz around her ears.

She greets you with a pat on the hand and a, "Good morning, Lapis."

"Good morning, Mama Lipsky." You rest your other hand on her arm, feeling the blood flow meticulously through her.

Mama Lipsky prepares some cereal for herself – it neither looks nor smells as interesting as Steven's cereal – and, at her insistence, you nibble on a browned piece of bread that she refers to as _toast_. It's almost bland, with just a hint of soft flavor, and you're wondering about that box she put it in to change it when you hear the door-chime ring.

You drop your toast and run as fast as you can without winged assistance to the door, peering through the window as you have seen Steven do. When what is perhaps the only other blue face on Earth peeks back at you, you hurriedly open the door. Dr. Drakken steps in with another human behind him.

"Good morning, Lapis!" Drakken sounds as pleased as if he has spun the planet back toward the sun all by himself. "How was your night?"

You search for a word that would sum it up. Finding none, you shrug – "It was okay."

This is what you do on Earth when you can't talk about it.

"Well, I've got someone I'd like you to meet!" Drakken says.

"Yeah, so can I come in already, or would that spoil your big surprise?" says a second voice, this one with something snide in its shadows.

Drakken, still sparkly-eyed, inches backward into the hall, clearing a space for a woman to enter the house, her stride long and loose. She wears a clinging one-piece suit that swears ambiguous allegiance to green and black Diamonds you have never heard of. Her skin is a thin film of greenish-yellow whose color falls short even of Peridot's hair. It is even more striking against her hair – shiny black, not absorbent black like Drakken's – with an eerie green glow to outline it, as though it has been wired with some of Homeworld's new technology. Her body is all wiry muscle and harsh, angled bone.

Her eyes are narrow, her nose shrewd. There is a certain danger about her, woven thicker than Jasper's beneath the possibility of friendliness. While are you trying to decide whether to be afraid of her or not, she lifts one side of her mouth, painted black and set sardonically. It is a smile, cool and reluctant compared to Steven's or Drakken's, yet not without its own kindness.

She takes stock of you in an instant, saying "I don't know how you do it, Dr. D. You even found a blue one."

When she says, "Hi. I'm Shego," you think you may have already known that.

"Oh!" you say. "You're the friend that beats him up."

Shego lets out a laugh – one sharp as a bird's beak, yet you do not think it was _meant_ to skewer you. "Yep, that's me!" She swings her asymmetric smile up toward Dr. Drakken. "You been telling her a lot about me, Doc?"

"Yes! All of it g-g-g –"The black markings under Drakken's eyes fold as he searches for words of his own. "All g-g-g-g – errr, true!"

The smile-curl drills deeper into her cheeks as Shego turns back to you. "Well, I've heard plenty about _you_ ," she says. "Mostly of the 'Shego, help me!' type. In fact, lemme see here, I think the first text said, 'I might possibly maybe be in love, but she's at the bottom of the ocean. What do I do?' Exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point."

The cold waters of memory are limned by the knowledge that Dr. Drakken was sending messages about you over his phone.

Mama Lipsky escorts you into the kitchen, and then drags Drakken down to someplace known as the _basement_ to help her look for her extra box of _coffee grounds_. He goes with her, twisting to call back, "You ladies have a lot to talk about, though! Shego has powers, too!"

Shego slides into a chair with her eyebrows high. "Too?" she asks.

"I have water powers." Your tone is so empty of shyness you almost don't recognize it as your own. "What are yours?"

Shego coils her fingers back. When she snaps them forward again, verdant waves just short of flames rise from them, encasing and glowing until her hand is as green and powerful-looking as the ship that returned you to this planet. No other part of her moves.

Your legs take one step back instinctively, but you command them not to take another one. Instead, you simply say, "Wow. Can you start fires with those? Rubies can start fires."

Shego's expression remains impassive, save for a nodule of pride. "Well, not exactly. It sort of does the work of fire without any actual fire. It scorches things, melts them – and it's great for punching people. Knocks 'em into the next room and can really give you a nasty burn at the right angle."

She doesn't sound as if that bothers her greatly.

"I've never met so many humans with powers before," you say, tipping up on one foot. "All Gems have powers. Well – _most_ of them."

You feel a spiteful victory that Era Two Peridots are the exception, and you can almost feel the Rubies' fire on your tongue, poised to share the information, before a breach extinguishes it. This isn't the playful gossip about the Crystal Gems that you related to Dr. Drakken. To shame Peridot for a deficiency over which she has no more control than her gem location is the work of someone like Jasper.

A kinder Gem wouldn't need the added incentive of Shego not knowing, or likely caring, who Peridot is.

"Yeah, I've had my powers a lot longer than Dr. D's had his," Shego says, and you assume she's referring to Drakken. "Poor slob hasn't really learned how to control them yet."

"Oh. Well, I've had mine longer than either of you." You form a smile and then let it drift away with the tide. "I'm just having to relearn how to use them on Earth, since Gems can't drown and humans can."

"Seems solid." Shego scans you with the intensity of a Red Eye. "You don't strike me as the drowning-people type."

And although she does not know you, every facet of your being implores her to be right.

You grapple for something else to say to her, remembering it probably isn't polite to comment on her paleness, nor on her plentiful hair, nor on the arrowhead point of her jawline. Finally, you settle on, "So…Drakken told me you used to work with him?"

"Yeah," Shego says. "The Doc and I go back a ways."

"In time?" you ask. You are fairly certain your guess is correct, but as you don't know the location of their meeting, you see reason to clarify.

"Yep. About six years," Shego says, as though that is any way a significant amount of time. "I knew from the start he was gonna be a little pain in the rear, but he was also the only one who didn't make me feel like I was trying to break into a man's job."

From the angry glitter in her eyes, you can tell this is something of high value to her, and yet there's no part of you that can empathize. "Oh," you say, shrugging. "I wouldn't know about that. My species doesn't have men."

"Nice." Shego grunts with a sophistication not even all of the Elite have perfected. "I mean, it's gotta be a lot less complicated that way, right?"

You shake your head. "Not really. Things have managed to get pretty messed up even with only women."

Shego's every expression is spare and dry, especially in comparison to Drakken's unrestrained ones, but now she sends a tiny scrap of approval your direction. "You know, you're honest. I like that.

"And for what it's worth," she adds slyly, "Drakken's _crazy_ about you. These past few weeks, it's been all 'Oh, Shego, I can't wait for you to meet Lapis! She's so much fun! You'll just love her!', etc."

Your cheeks unconsciously shift several shades darker than the one mandated by the color of your gem. You attempt to deflect it by responding, "He likes you a lot, too. Even when he told me about you beating him up, he did with a smile. I…I can tell you're very important to him."

The corners of Shego's mouth reward you with an upward tweak. She scrapes her chair closer to yours, and in a whisper she says, "So – if this isn't too personal a question – why'd you fall for Dr. D?"

Her voice suggests that she does not terribly care if it is too personal, but there's not the demand and utter disregard that come from Jasper. You appreciate this.

You consider what she has asked. In the time you've known each other, Drakken has done most of the falling, so you search for alternative meaning. "You mean…why am I in love with him?" You have never before announced yourself to be in love, and you are surprised by the lack of quiver when you do now.

"Exactly. So spill!"

The only object in sight that could do so is a chipped mug, and it is empty. "You _want_ me to spill it?" you say, pointing to the mug.

The laughter that splatters out of Shego is the first thing about her that she hasn't kept tight reins on. "No, it just means _tell_ me."

You don't want to tell her; you want to reflect it for her: Dr. Drakken securing a towel around your wet shoulders; the ice cream cone, extended in an invitation to sample; his delicate hands treasuring your fingerprints; the broad sweep of his arm as he ushered you away from the silly hand mirror that frightened you so; his tears as he confessed his stained past; the glee with which he showed you storybooks; his uncharacteristic patience in explaining to you; the twig-flag he poked into the top of your sandcastle as proudly as the rebel Gems planted Rose's banner; the shine on his face as he watched you dance; the feel of Steven's arms around you as he told you that he promised Drakken you would call when you were safe – every tiny, rich deposit of your reef.

Words seem flimsy, inadequate, unfit for flight. And yet you owe it to Dr. Drakken to try.

"He was so _kind_ to me," you risk saying.

Shego's gloved, unnaturally long fingernails tap an amused pattern on the tabletop. "Yeah, that was always part of his downfall as a villain."

You giggle once before sobering again. "And he's so brave."

Shego has a brief coughing spell, similar to the one Drakken had this summer when he accidentally breathed in one of Earth's tiniest insects. "Brave?"

There's a dumbfounded aim to her question. You nod, firmly, to erase it. "He's overcome so much, and it's changed him for the better," you say. "He makes Earth seem like a wonderful place. Like it's worth sticking around just to see how magnificent everything is to him. He makes…he makes it seem like life can be good again."

Not a movement from Shego.

"And that's something I need," you continue, ducking the ends of your hair forward to meet, "because up until lately, my life has really sucked."

The only motion now is a grin. "I hear ya, kiddo," Shego says in the happiest tone she's used thus far.

Warmth drips in the crevice between your shoulder blades.

"And speaking of the Doc…" Shego inclines her head toward the stairs, which Drakken and his mother are now ascending with a great clatter, she holding boxes and pouches, he with a glass of something thick and pastel-brown in it.

"We come bearing coffee!" Drakken says. Giggles are interspersed between his words, that thunderous bubbled laugh that can be summoned by simply being alive. "Are you two getting along? I thought you would! I told you she was a _friendly_ type of alien, Shego!"

Shego's eyes sparkle, mellowing them somewhat. "Not that I couldn't totally take her if I had to," she says.

Your brow puckers. "Take me where?"

"You…totally could not!" Drakken springs upward, poking his finger toward Shego, though you're not aware of any threat in the air, and your intuition is fairly acute. "Not if she was by the ocean!"

"Someone's taking me to the ocean?" you pose again. It's a well-intentioned offer that you aren't ready to accept yet.

Something passes between Drakken and Shego then, something that has been raised and tossed about so often that the words have been pared away, the essence distilled to nothing more than a glance. It has a different presence, a different heft than the ones that pass between him and yourself – without the constant glances down at the path to ensure you still walk in tandem. And it is not jealousy you feel.

Drakken smiles luminously again and takes a sip, long and relishing, from the glass. Right before he turns back to help his mother with her armload, something staccato slips from between his lips – a short, flat sound, like a gulp being played backward.

"What was that?" you whisper to Shego.

"Oh, that?" Knowledge steeps on Shego's face, sincerity. "That's a one-body symphony. Height of class. Takes years to master."

You tuck that information away.

"Oooh, and now there's whispering!" Drakken exclaims. "That's a sign of good friendship, am I right?"

A trail of the brown is now smeared across his top lip, dribbling at the ends. It piques your curiosity. "What's that you're drinking?" you ask. Your powers lie indifferently inside you, so you know it is not a form of water.

"Nothing more than good old two-percent milk with cocoa powder mixed in!" Drakken says. "It's called cocoa m –"

Shego groans as though about to lose her physical form. "Oh, don't get him _started_ on that. He'll never shut up!"

Drakken sniffs with mock haughtiness and stalks back through the kitchen door. There is no tension in your back as you watch the hunching line of his, no room for dismay with his vivaciousness crowding the kitchen.

It is your duty now to heal so you don't burden Steven and the Crystal Gems any more than you already have. And while you don't know where that undamaged place is if not at Blue Diamond's feet, every encounter with Dr. Drakken feels like a step closer.

At last, Drakken plunks his empty glass on the table near you, the last few drops of cocoa-milk taking a slow, dribbling journey down the sides, and plunks himself into the chair on the other side of you. "Would you like to go to my house a little later and meet Commodore Puddles, Lapis?"

"Commodore Puddles?" you ask. "Oh – your little wolf?"

"That thing is nothing like a wolf." Shego's volume is low, her measure scornful.

With great, visible effort, Drakken dismisses her. "I should probably warn you," he says, to you, "he doesn't really like people that much. Except for me."

You shrug, helped along by the reflection of yourself with a baseball bat hanging from one hand, flanked at each elbow by a distrusted compatriot, the space constringed and smothering and zippered enough that you had to deliberately concentrate to keep yourself from slinging the bat like a club. "Sounds like me," you say.

Shego subdues a laugh into her palm. On Homeworld, such a display would have been regarded as disrespectful; here, it seems a sign of acceptance.

"Oh, but don't worry, Lapis." Drakken's voice clutches you and soothes in a manner he must have been given by his mother – it seems near-exotic to you, that this trait was able to be duplicated rather than relinquished. "His bark is worse than his bite."

This is one expression you don't need explained to you. You are somewhat familiar with the behavior of wolves.

Shego captures Drakken's jubilant gaze with her own nimble one. "Sort of like you, Doc," she says.

Applying that to Drakken stirs up a little more puzzlement, but not much. Although Drakken hasn't barked before, you've heard his heavy tone and strident pitch when he is riled. But you have never known him to bite or strike anyone, though he must have in his villain days – a time which seems as ancient and removed as Homeworld's glory.

You smile to yourself. You still understand the expression.

* * *

Dr. Drakken remains at his mother's house long enough to prepare and consume another class of cocoa-milk – whiteness poured from the carton and then seasoned with a sprinkling of sweet-swelling special drink powder from a brown tin. By then, you are persuaded that despite the occasional disagreement between her words and her inflection, Shego is an ally.

During the short span of your flight beside the hovercraft, Drakken repeatedly glances your way, as though he fears you have fallen from the sky. After two or three indignant twitches of your wings, you realize it's not that he doubts your competence; it is that he can barely keep his excitement bound inside his body.

The blue-circled house soon comes into view. You choose the grass for your landing strip – you have grown accustomed to it during your brief stay at the barn, and the stone package on which the hovercraft lands appears rough-textured, too similar to the sand you last viewed through four eyes blurred with loathing. In Drakken's presence, avoiding it does not feel like catering to your own weakness.

Drakken leads you across the grass – he refers to it as a _lawn_ – and up to the front door, which he unlocks and swings open wide, his grin riding up cockeyed as though the sides are racing one another to the top. "Welcome," he says grandly.

You place one foot over the threshold and then the other, moving as if through the gooey innards of a defective escape pod. This is Dr. Drakken's _home_.

He shows you up a squat flight of stairs, into a room he calls the _living room_. You are confused by that – all the rooms were made to be lived in, after all – and yet to ask him would be to disrupt the giddy tide pouring from him. He has already sprouted petals again.

The walls are white as Mama Lipsky's milk, striking against his maroon and umber furniture. Drakken looks at one chair with particular fondness. The couch appears fresher and plumper than the wilted one at his mother's house. A few piles of cloth – alternate clothes, you assume – lie untended in a corner, and you abruptly envy that he's comfortable enough to eschew orderliness.

A television screen, not half the size of the ones used by Homeworld even in your time, claims the focus on one wall. Tucked beneath it is an oblong, rectangular storage container, holes in the sides and a system of interlocking dungeon gates across the front that worry the flesh around your gem. From between the links peers a pair of cautious brown eyes.

"You keep him in a _cage_? He's your _prisoner_?" you say. The carpet is plush and there is something remarkably unspectacular about it under your toes; you defy your voice the right to quiver.

Abject terror is what you see in Drakken's face, stamped there as though by the seal that once fastened the Diamonds' letters. His hands begin to wave, frantically, two little engines churning for their lives. "No, no, no, Lapis! Commodore Puddles isn't a prisoner! He's a _pet_!"

"But you have him in a cage!"

"It isn't a cage. It's a kennel." The buoy-words rustle nervously from side to side. "I hardly ever put him in there, but I just sprayed down the bathroom with bleach.

"That's a chemical commonly used in housecleaning," Drakken says, before you have a chance to inquire. "It's very effective at killing germs and shining surfaces – but it's toxic to ingest or get in your eyes. And dogs, as intelligent as they are, can't be trusted to read toxin labels." The vibration of Drakken's chuckle sounds a little too tightly strung. "Normally, I let him have free rein of the house."

You glance around the house, and while it is much more spacious than Mama Lipsky's and probably appears even larger to a small wolf, the air will stale quickly. "Does he ever get to _leave_ the house?" you say.

"Oh, yes, all the time! I take him out for walks almost every day – his leash is by the back door –"

"You tie him to a chain?" You are in no danger of squealing now, for you know you are missing something. The Dr. Drakken you know, the one who stands before you now wearing a smile so anxious it dents the rounds of both cheeks, is not capable of such oppression.

"GGkk! No! It's not a chain – it's – it's fabric, and it's very soft. I take him all around the block and let him explore," Drakken says. "I just follow behind with the leash to keep him from wandering into construction sites or – or junkyards – or – or –"

"Or wars?" you finish for him.

You wonder how different your life would have been if anyone had cared about you enough to follow you to Earth.

The waxy fear all across Drakken melts into something soft that he turns on you. "Yes," he says. "Something like that, yes. Would you like to meet him?"

You nod.

Drakken walks over to the _kennel_ and squeezes the rod protruding from one side of the interlocks. Both ends shrink inward and the door clicks open, and a creature emerges from inside.

Shego is right – this creature is nothing like a wolf. Nor is he anything like the big red Clifford in the books Drakken showed you.

He is a sunset cloud, padding lightly across the floor. The pink – of a gem, of a sword, of a shield – and the curls that once spoke of dissent and distress now represent unmatched purity, and you smile to see them. His ears slacken down where wolves' ears taper up, hung with the same tufts of pink fluff that grace his tiny paws. The rest of his coat is snug and tidy, as if he has shapeshifted it close to his skin, though you suspect that, like Drakken's, it is the result of meetings with scissors.

The wolf's eyes match the drizzles on the sides of Drakken's glass: milky-brown and runny. They are gentle eyes, even as the fur on the back of his neck elevates.

Drakken fits himself between the two of you with a lack of neatness, although it does not take much to block the wolf from your sight or you from his. "Shhhh, it's okay, Commodore Puddles," he says. The words are bobbing again, tender and playful, in their natural element. "She's not an intruder, boy. She is our esteemed guest."

 _Esteemed_ has a much broader, freer scope than the heavily-guarded borders of _elite_ , and you decide at once that you prefer it.

"Her name is Lapis Lazuli," Drakken continues, reclining on one knee so that he is closer to his wolf's level. "She's my – she's a – she's friendly. We _like_ Lapis."

Commodore Puddles seems doubtful, but he approaches with his head lowered, his black nose bulging as he sniffs. "He's not growling," Drakken whispers to you. "That's a good sign. He usually growls."

It _is_ a good sign. After sharing a being with Jasper, you have heard all the growling you can tolerate.

"Here, put your hand down for him to sniff," Drakken says.

In spite of your disbelief in the merit of that idea, you let your hand descend until it is centimeters away from the flaring nostrils. They are sodden and slippery as they connect with your fingers, a sensation consistent with your Teachings but still startling. Commodore Puddles draws one long, deep whiff, and then he pulls back and a thin whimper comes from his _snout_ – a term gleaned from reading the wolf books.

"What's the problem?" you say, hardly daring to so much as move your lips.

"Ummm….either you smell like a cat or a vet….orrrrrr you've got no scent at all." Drakken glances the palm of his hand off his forehead. "You don't have a scent at all, do you?"

You shake your head in slow strokes. Of course, like any other stone, you can take on the odor of your surroundings – right now, Commodore Puddles is probably smelling sharp air and old leaves and a hint of sea salt that always seems to linger on your physical form – but you, yourself, do not produce a smell the way Dr. Drakken does.

"It's okay, Commodore Puddles," Drakken continues to comfort his dog. "She's just an alien, that's all. Nothing to worry about."

He reaches down and entwines his fingers into the woolen curls, nodding to you. You bend over and tentatively do the same, resting your hand atop a tangled knot of fur that ruffles only slightly as you rub it. This is the closest you have ever been to a land animal.

"Hello, Commodore Puddles," you say. "Sorry you can't smell me. I'm not organic, after all."

"Inorganic but still a very kind person!" Drakken hastens to add. It has been millennia since you were described in such a way.

Commodore Puddles prances in place, pulls back after a moment, and then lifts those liquid eyes to you before shaking himself with a great jingling of metal shapes around his neck you will ask about later and trotting off.

"Well!" Drakken takes a backward step and drops his hands to his hips in apparent satisfaction. "That went much smoother than usual! You know, I think he likes you."

You have no idea why that feels so good.

* * *

The next people you are scheduled to meet are Kim Possible and her sidekick – whose name Dr. Drakken admits that he can never quite remember. This seems an odd thing to you, until you realize that humans do not have their namesakes stamped somewhere on their bodies to serve as a reminder.

Kim is probably at the sidekick's house, Drakken explains to you as he flies his hovercraft away from his blue-spotted house with you swooping along beside it. Her own house was destroyed in the Lorwardian invasion several months ago; while thankfully no one was home, her family lost everything they owned.

The next flap of your wings is hard, as though they have been solidified for an instant.

The sidekick's house, several streets away from Drakken's, is plain in comparison. Its roof juts out like the brow of a cavern, and the door on which Drakken knocks appears sunken too far into its frame.

A woman who must be Kim Possible opens it. Unlike most humans, she is not significantly larger than you, and that she was the one to see Dr. Drakken imprisoned surprises you for only a moment. If a Lapis can restrain a Quartz for so many tides, no odds can be predicted. Her hair is the color of Chalcedony, her skin sandy, and her eyes remind you of those things you have seen floating atop ponds – Steven called them _lily pads_.

When she sees the two of you, Kim breaks into a smile, smooth yet warm. "Drakken! What are you doing here?" she says, and although her tone is surprised, there is no suggestion in it that she is addressing an archenemy.

Drakken shrugs. "Well, I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by," he says. His buoy-words have a skittish swish.

"Dude, you're _always_ in the neighborhood," a second person says. A boy slightly taller than Kim – between Steven's age and Drakken's, you would hazard – appears in the doorway behind her. His face has sun-speckles, as Drakken's did this summer, though his are a bright medium brown, not black, and his hair is equally sunny. "You _live_ here now, ya know, and…WHOA."

This last exclamation comes upon seeing you.

You don't mind. You are long past expecting to be greeted with reverence.

Kim's smile grows. "Well, Drakken, who's _this_?" she says, inclining her head toward you.

Drakken's cheeks turn into a pair of Rose Quartz gems. "Ummm, this is Lapis Lazuli," he says. "My – err – significant other."

You swing a look up to him. "Other what?" you ask. You didn't think he had any other Lapises in his life, much less significant ones.

Kim folds her arms across the front of her top, which you notice crops off at the end like yours. "Come on, Drakken. The girl's confused. Explain it to her."

"It's a word that means….we're in a relationship," he stammers, "the kind of relationship where... where we… we are…" Kim's smile widens and widens until Drakken's shoulders finally swell with a sigh and he says, "She's my girlfriend."

There is a snicker, badly muffled, from the sidekick.

"Girlfriend," you say slowly. "I like the sound of that." You look again at Drakken, who still flushes. "Does that make you my…man-friend?"

"Boyfriend." Drakken supplies this information at a squeak. "And this is _her_ boyfriend –" He flails a hand over Kim's head at the sidekick. "Her boyfriend, um…"

"Ron Stoppable," the boy says, sounding weary. This is clearly a discussion they have had many times before. He glances expectantly at you, as though hoping your mind will store information with more precision than Drakken's.

You cannot promise him that, so you simply respond with politeness, "Hello, ma'am."

Immediately Ron's eyes cloud over. "Awww, man, is this about the goof-up at my Bar Mitzvah again?" he sputters.

"I don't know what those words mean," you confess, still grinning.

Fidgeting, Drakken leans down toward you. "No, no, no, Lapis. For boys, it's _sir_ ," he says, as quietly as you have ever known him to speak. While you blink to assimilate the new Earth-term, he straightens again and flashes all of his well-granulated teeth at Ron. "Sorry. Her species only has women."

Ron's brows descend in the same line as Mama Lipsky's did when you mentioned her chin – a line that makes even less sense in its appearance here. How in the stars can "woman" be an insult? "A likely story," he says.

But Kim is blinking, too, her eyes never moving from yours as if afraid to invalidate what has always been the natural order of things. "Her _species_?" she repeats.

"Yes," you say, before you can lose your nerve or your courtesy. "I'm an alien."

The word tastes pungent across your lips, and you silently vow never to use it again.

Kim releases a mighty breath and leans her right elbow back against the doorframe. "Oh, thank goodness. I thought he'd found a regular Earth girl and dyed her blue."

The look she gives Dr. Drakken is one that has known him longer than you have. You think that is what makes everything on Drakken bunch up into an overall sheepishness. It is charming on him.

Ron's arms come unfolded, and he stares agog at you. "WHAT?"

The single syllable is a huff, the kind that will come from a Sapphire right before the ground beneath her feet begins to freeze.

You see no need to answer the question twice – it was one of your biggest annoyances in the mirror; that people would ask the same question over and over – and so you simply plant your jaw and wait. Ron averts his own gaze, all the way down to the fraying toes of his shoes and slightly to the left, and in that moment you understand what it is to be a Pearl.

"Ye-es," Dr. Drakken hedges. "Is that a problem?"

A laugh bursts from Ron, a deformed laugh blasting through a tight emergence hole. "No, sir, the Ron-man can be _very_ open-minded."

"That explains why you're not looking at me," you mutter.

The only thing you see then is Dr. Drakken's face, bending close to yours, a look of bemusement scampering across it. "Did Shego teach you that?" he says.

You shake your head. "I kind of always knew it. It just took me a while to figure out how it works on Earth."

And right now, it is the only thing keeping you from feeling as if you have been tread across, a big footprint left in the center of your back.

The silence that descends is as uncomfortable as an ill-fitting shapeshift. You scavenge for a shred of the kindness that once came to you so easily. "I'm not from Lorwardia," you say.

Kim's eyes sparkle. "Wasn't seeing much of a resemblance. Where you from, then?"

It is almost visible, how she terraforms the conversation: suspicion dammed up, flow redirected.

You are able to say, "Homeworld," yet with a dull imitation of the pride you once took in the name; in your people; in the diamond insignia woven by threads of light into your clothes. You wish you could blame it on Ron's aversion.

"Uh, I don't mean to be rude, but so what?" Ron says – to Drakken, and not to you. His voice is the same – thick and high, with a shrill edge that rivals your top pitch, only now he has filled it with ice. "Tell me her species has never invaded another planet!"

Drakken runs a hand down the back of his neck. His cough, you gather, has nothing to do with the condition of his lungs. "Well, I _would_ ," he says, "but I'm trying not to lie anymore."

Ron's expression is triumph, springing gaudily over a current of fear.

Drakken apparently can't bear it any more than you can. "But _she_ isn't like that, Stoppable!" he says. "She's good and loving, and she's sorry, and you can't blame her for the mistakes her people have made! That's like saying, 'Well, okay, Hitler was a human, and you're a human, so you're the same.'"

You do not know who Hitler is, but from the dark look that sweeps across Ron's face, you were lucky not to have known him. He kicks the grayed shoe against the carpet, and yet no other argument comes from him.

Kim gives her _boyfriend_ the sour glance of a Commander too gracious to scold in public. "Well, come on in, guys," she says. "Make yourself at home."

Only once Ron has turned his back on you do you slip your hand into Drakken's. You aren't sure which one of you squeezes first.

Together, you walk into a room with light-Amethyst walls and sturdy beige furniture and pale, patted-down carpet. A screen stretches across one full wall, massive in length but thin from back to front; should Peridot see it, there would be no end to the squealing. Clearly these Rons – no, the family as a whole would likely be referred to as _Stoppable_ s – are higher-ranking than Drakken and his mother; perhaps even elite, although they do it without snobbishness.

You are almost disappointed. Snobbishness, at least, you have encountered before. Snobbishness you somewhat understand.

"So, does she have any weird alien powers?" Ron says, addressing Drakken. The deliberate slant of his body away from you is an insult.

It would be without sting were it without truth.

Kim speaks a cryptic phrase: "Ron, turn down the temp." Though her tone lashes, her eyes are kind, and kind they remain as she turns to Drakken and says, "Congrats, Drakken. I'm glad this worked out for you."

Drakken's smile beams, his cheeks round, his teeth rectangular.

"But have you really _thought_ about it?" Ron flings his hands out, palms turned desperately upward, going white around the lines. "I mean – what if she can shapeshift or something?"

"As a matter of fact, I can," you volunteer. "But this is my natural form."

Drakken's "That's not actually helping" fuses with Ron's "A-ha! I _knew_ it!"

Kim touches her boyfriend's arm. "Like I said, chill."

This phrase you have heard. Amethyst says it to Pearl all the time.

Ron bends his head down closer to Kim's, so close that you can see the thistle-like patches that sprout in his hair. "You mean, after – I mean – you seriously don't care what she can do?"

He whispers as poorly as Drakken. No true whisper ever achieves that much clarity.

But Dr. Drakken's voice can out-thunder it with ease. "Speaking of abilities," he says even louder, "how is our darling little Hana?"

It melts the suspicion straight off Ron. "Oh, she's doin' great," he says. "Walking – talking – leaving all those baby books behind in the _dust_."

You glance from Kim to Ron and back again. Did they make this baby?

Somehow you doubt it. They are both so young, even by Earth standards, and though you see affection in Kim's eyes, it is mild and distant – not a mother's expression at all.

"She hasn't defeated any more demons of darkness lately," Ron continues. "But she did say her first 'Booyah' last week."

There is an unmistakable pleasantness when he talks about Hana, when he interacts with the others. It only makes the sting worse.

Drakken hoots. "I love that!" He turns to Kim. "So is Dementor still after that battle suit of yours?"

 _Dementor_ is a name Drakken's mentioned before, one for which he doesn't seem to have much tolerance.

A huff comes out of Kim, and she waves it around the room with her fingers. "Oh, that thing's on its last legs, but try convincing _Dementor_ of that. He still thinks if he gets his hands on it, he can be the next Iron Man or something. In fact, just yesterday I got a call from Wade…"

"She's not very big," Ron muses from his spot where he kneels on the couch. "So her powers must be mental – like – like – mind-reading!" He shoves his face, now inspired, uncomfortably close to yours. "Can you read my mind?"

You don't answer.

Ron grabs both of his temples. "What am I thinking right now?"

"That I might be reading your mind?" you say.

Ron whimpers, a sound that, mottled with fear, generally summons your pity. You can't retrieve any now.

Drakken and Kim have fallen into a familiar conversation by now, and they drift away through a doorless doorway into another room, which features a table and chairs; a sink and a flat countertop; and an ice closet, so you gather it is a _kitchen_. You are left alone with the young man whose accuses you of every crime since the inception of the universe.

You hang your arms at your sides, unroll your toes, and imagine an invisible string pulling you into the posture that resembles a straight spine. Do whatever you need to inure to what will come next.

A timepiece ticks.

You don't need to read Ron's mind; you can track his thoughts from the movements of his eyes. They are the same shade as his sun-specks, and they never once extend contact to yours: they shift nervously to the ceiling above his head, then throw a crooked glance at your feet, then traipse up every step in the wide, distinguished flight of stairs that lead to another level of his house.

The gem on your back feels the size of a moon, too large for the body it crafted. "I'm not going to hurt her," you say at last.

"Who?" Ron squeaks.

"The girl upstairs. Hana." You squint at him. "I can tell you care about her very much."

There's a bead of sweat on Ron's forehead. "R-really?"

You release the squint and stare at him, wide-eyed. "The word I read in your mind was…" You chance a guess. "…sister?"

Ron swallows, and his throat-bump bobs as if it's under siege by fierce waves. One hand drops to one of the many oversized, buttoned pockets on his sand-colored pants, and it squeezes until the fingernails whiten.

"I'm not going to hurt what's in your pocket, either," you say. You take careful, nebulous pauses between words, much the way Sapphires do when they are predicting a future.

Ron's hand shoots back up and grasps a flat-faced pad that reminds you of the lower-tech interfaces your people used to use. It has more buttons than his pants, and his thumb jumps into position over the top, translucent one. Peridot has used that enough times that you know what it does.

"You're thinking about turning on the magic box so you don't have to talk to me anymore," you say.

Ron's laugh breaks into halves that fizzle and die. "I don't suppose you know if there's anything good on?" he says.

You let your eyes roll. "I can read _your_ mind, not _its_."

There is a frenzied nod. Ron's glance bounces across the back door for the faintest moment, and you nod as well.

"Yeah, go ahead and go outside," you advise. "Take a minute." You lean in on your knuckles, so that you can see individual strands of golden hair shivering in his nostrils. "Let your head rest. Everything looks pretty tangled up in there."

Ron leaps from the couch and trips over his own untied foot-laces three times before making it to the back door, which he bangs shut behind him, hard enough that the house seems to jump on its foundation. Numbness that's already won your insides begins to creep out to your limbs.

Drakken chuckles from the kitchen. Even muffled as it is by mechanical hums and scraping chairs, you can almost feel its weight, linking around you and hanging on like his unwieldy arms do.

You hear the sound of a door, too new to creak, breathing open. Footsteps start across the smooth pat of the carpet, and you'd like to imagine they're Drakken's. But the tread is something harder, something stronger, something flexible but stiffer than the soft cushion of Drakken's boots, and the steps are farther apart, taken by longer legs.

The couch texture responds to the outline of your fingers, and you trace a diamond. "Hi, Ron. Welcome back," you say without looking up.

"How did you know it was me?"

This time you do look up. Ron is teetering on the toes of his dingy grayish shoes, and the rest of him appears to be teetering, too. His eyes bulge as though he is reacting unfavorably to another planet's atmosphere.

You give him a half-smile that you hope is sufficiently mystic. "I have my ways."

Ron takes several steps backward, shaking his head. He trips over a table that's been rather pointlessly placed in the middle of the room and gets back up with red ears.

A mean satisfaction settles over you, the way a mist once silvered your broken eyes.

You are glad when Drakken tells you it's time to leave.

 **~And so. . . the stage is set for next chapter's conflict. I don't wanna give spoilers, but rest assured there will be fallout and follow-up.~**


	15. Party

**~Yep, I'm back. 'Bout time, I guess.**

 **So many faves! So many follows! So many reviews! How did this happen?**

 **You guys are the best. :D~**

Dr. Drakken informs you that in a few days there will be a party at Global Justice – his Purpose-place.

You are still amazed by the fact that humans are allowed to select their own Purposes, without ceremony, without ordinance. Errors must be prolific. Certainly no Diamond would ever be foolish enough to Assign such as a man as Dr. Drakken to world domination.

And yet when you hear about Global Justice, you cannot help but feel that Drakken has chosen wisely this time. At Global Justice, he explains to you with aplomb, agents and scientists use machines, chemicals, and diplomacy to disable threats against the world's safety.

Your neck twitches a little under your ribbon. You have a history of not getting along with those who appoint themselves Earth's defenders.

You are aware, also, that you have a meanness that flares when faced with the unknown, and the thought of being mean to Drakken's crew limits the room around you until there is hardly room to move. You widen it with questions.

"Is it someone's birthday?" is your first. This is the only type of _party_ you have heard of; you learned from Steven, who recently became fourteen, that humans like to mark the anniversary of their emergence with sweets and games. You could never have such a thing: you have long since stopped counting your years, Homeworld's lunar cycle won't translate to Earth's calendars, and even if you _could_ pinpoint the date in question, you would share it with all other Lapis Lazulis of your class.

Human beings, on the other hand, will take any occasion to celebrate. It must make up for the amount of time they're required to spend asleep.

"No, no one's birthday," Dr. Drakken says. "It's not _that_ kind of party. It's just more a – an – an office get-together. We'll eat appetizers and drink punch and talk about our jobs, all that sort of thing. And we're each allowed to bring one person with us." He props his hands on his straight torso and looks at you with a hopeful perk to his eyebrow. "And I pick you… if that's all right?"

You hesitate just long enough for your mind to skim the notion that you could refuse him if you wanted to. But, of course, you don't, and you give him your "yes" momentarily.

Drakken throws his fist into the air and pulls it back in toward his chest. "Oh, thank you, Lapis! Ooohh, I can't wait to show you my lab, and introduce you to Dr. Director, and…." The buoy-words flap on and on.

For the next few days, Drakken keeps a countdown with the diligence of a Peridot, accessorizing it with his insistence that everyone at "GJ" will _love_ you. He seems so confident of it that you dare to almost believe him.

The Earth has made two full rotations and is in the evening of a third when Drakken leaps up from the couch where the two of you have been reading a story about a nomad crab who's outgrown his home. In a frenzy, he checks the miniature timepiece on his wrist. "Oh, fizzlebottom! Is that the time?" he says.

"Yes," you say. It is a strange question – does he believe his timepiece lies to him?

"Oh. Oh. Ohhhhhhhh – okay! Almost party time!"Drakken scrapes a hand back through his disheveled hair-spikes and sniffs the hand when it returns. "Yes – err – I need to go take a shower!"

"Take it where?" _You_ have been known to walk away with the greater portion of a rainshower and leave it elsewhere, but that's not one of Dr. Drakken's abilities.

"In the bathroom," Drakken says. At your furrowed forehead, he adds, "You remember seeing that big dented wall at one end of the bathroom? With a little barrier over it, about so high?" He holds his hand at knee level.

You nod. "Oh. Do you get in there and wait for it to rain?" It seems rather ridiculous, until you remember from Drakken's enormous screen that humans have learned to predict the behavior of weather.

Drakken chuckles. "Oh. No, not quite. There's a faucet in there, and the water comes through the plumbing –"

"Like in the sinks?" you say.

"Exactly! Only this faucet is _extremely_ high up so that when the water comes out, it's able to rinse your whole body. Then you lather up some soap and scrub the germs off, and _that's_ what I need to go do! Right now!"

Drakken skitters back toward the bathroom. You follow him, but he halts you in the doorway and patters his fingers on it. "Um, Lapis," he says. "I'm going to take a shower now."

"Right. I understand."

Several pink circles of discomfort appear on Drakken's face. "No, errr, you don't. I mean – no offense – but when humans take showers, they're n – na – they aren't wearing any clothes."

"Okay."

"Which means showing our bodies." Drakken isn't speaking with buoyancy anymore. His words are flat and scratched.

"Is that…bad?" you venture.

"Can be. Most humans try to keep their bodies – well, a little bit private," Drakken squeaks at the ceiling. The pink in those circles deepens alarmingly.

You recognize that you have embarrassed him, and while you aren't sure why, it's something you've never wanted to do. You take two immediate steps backward and navigate your way around the bend in the hallway, eyes cast away. "Okay," you say. "If that's what you need. Good luck with your body."

A laugh bursts from Drakken's inflated cheeks. "I shan't be long!" he calls back to you.

You haven't heard even Pearl say _shan't_ in the last few centuries.

Reclining on Drakken's fat sofa, you do your best to filter out the heavy, suckling sound of falling water. Your thoughts are still pushing and pulling, riptides, churning away any attempt to wade through them, and you finally realize that you must imitate Pearl yourself – you must rehearse. Not in front of a mirror, not with the memories vibrating like Gem destabilizers ready to destroy; yet it is a rehearsal all the same.

"Hello. I'm Lapis Lazuli. Nice to meet you." You say it in a voice too quiet to be heard over the rustle of leaves, repeat it in the firmest, brightest tone you can create, and then test it in every shade in between. It takes several blind dives before you hit upon the lightness that rises so naturally whenever you are with Steven or Drakken.

You practice smiling and find you can no longer do it on cue. You have much more success meeting and maintaining eye contact with Plastic Lazuli, which you find reassuring. If you can hold Plastic's unmoving seedlike gaze, you should have no trouble with blinking human eyes.

The fall of water stops with an artificial suddenness. In nature, water peters out and teases and drifts to spread its mischief somewhere else; it does not just _end_.

It is every bit as startling when Dr. Drakken emerges from the bathroom, redressed and scrubbed clean. His skin is moist, still dripping at the creases, several water droplets beading on his jutting ears. His hair has been tidied somehow so that it is fluffy rather than springy as it dries. The coat-of-lab he wears is the same mold as the one before, yet since you know humans can't shapeshift wrinkles and stains out of their clothing, you know he must have switched over to a new one.

The slight neatness of him almost makes him a stranger, and you are shy around strangers. But then he smiles, and it is the same smile from that first day on the beach, that smile that stumbles over itself even as it fills his whole being with magic.

"Are you ready?" Drakken asks.

You think about saying, _Ready as I'll ever be_ – another phrase you have picked up in Amethyst's company – but it seems too negative in light of Drakken's grin. You nod instead.

"You're so lucky you don't have to shower or change clothes or anything," Drakken says. "You're just able to get up and go whenever, aren't you? Have I mentioned that they're just going to _love_ you?"

"About fourteen times," you reply with a small grin of your own.

"Well, let's make it an even fifteen!" Drakken extends his arm, then stops and blinks. "Wait – no – fifteen is _odd_ , but – hmmm. It's more of a _round_ number, more of an estimate, while fourteen is more specific…"

Drakken's arm hangs limply in the space between you. You know what to do with _that_.

You loop your arm around his and pull them together so that your elbows hug. The smoothed fabric of his new coat takes the edge off his knobbiness, and you can only hope it planes the bristles from you, as well.

* * *

The two of you fly across town and stop at a small, drab building that flows purposefully into its surroundings. You take one look at it and sense that it holds secrets.

Your intuition is correct. The pair of doors outside give way to what you recognize as an elevator, protected by a flat screen and, above it, a round indent in the wall. Rather than delegate this job to a Pearl, Drakken excitedly bounds forward, peels off one glove, and presses his sweat-glistened hand to the screen as though it is a marvelous undertaking. He stands motionless, as motionless as Drakken can stand, as the indent flashes a red light across his eyes, inflating his chest when the elevator doors slide open with a ding. They must have identified him as the loyal, avid worker he surely is.

Though the elevator itself is smaller than you would like, the ride is short. When the doors open again, you are ejected out into a cavernous area of richest wood and dimmest lights and widest hallways.

Several dark shapes lurking in the background speak of technology, and to your own amazement, you don't find it repellant – not after a glance at Dr. Drakken. Although excitement inelegantly vibrates his frame, there is a certain precision to his movement, a Bismuth at the forge. His smile burns more brightly than their new hot metal.

A woman approaches flanked by two men, all of their uniforms pledging the same fidelity. The men surprise you with the fact that Drakken is not the biggest human on Earth, not by quite a bit; but it is the woman who captures your attention. She must be very high-ranking, because she has only one eye like a Sapphire, although hers is darker and a bit off-center, the other side of her face covered by a cloth patch like the one on a worn-out pair of Steven's denims. Her hair is the glistening color of Drakken's furniture and even shorter than yours, reaching only cheek distance. The planes of those cheeks are hard and businesslike, and yet they lift easily when she sees Drakken.

Drakken immediately ducks his head toward her – whether out of bashfulness or deference, you cannot tell. Either way, he clearly holds this woman in high regard. You give him a questioning look.

"That's Dr. _Director_." Drakken's explanation is on the near side of a squeak. "She's the head of the entire organization."

"Head?" You squint at Dr. Director, and while she does have a rather prominent head, it's still attached to a body.

"The boss," Drakken says.

"Oh. Yeah, I thought so." It would explain the one eye, though you are polite enough not to say this.

Drakken rounds up his full, roaming attention and sticks most of it at his _boss_. "Dr. Drakken," he says in a voice more formal than any you have ever known him to use. "Plus one."

"Lapis Lazuli," you pipe up. "I'm his girlfriend." It is not the essence of you, but you are proud to have the title.

The pink spots on Drakken's face ignite a darker stripe of blue across your own nose.

Dr. Director retracts her lower lip as though encaging a laugh. "Please step into my office," she says.

In a boxy room, the smaller of the two big men holds out a metallic reed the size of his forearm, where a bead blinks red on the end and feeds to a seeking gray screen. Drakken whispers to you that these are _sensors_. Your people have some of those, only theirs were bulky and immobile – at least in your day.

Drakken touches his thumb and first finger in a circle and steps forward as instructed. The man waves the wand over the course of Drakken's body, down one side and up again on the other. You know the signs of Dr. Drakken's distress, the cracks in his braveness, and you aren't seeing any now: no throaty whimpers, no crawling eye-skin, no ramming the fingertips together as if they are in an arena battle.

You firm your shoulders up and step forward to the second man. You have no weapons, no corruptions, nothing to hide.

His scanner pans you. You cannot hear it or feel it, only see it as the light leaks over your toes and then climbs again up your other side.

"Dr. Director?" the man says. "I'm not picking up anything."

"Great," Dr. Director says. "Send her through."

"No, I mean I'm not picking up _anything_ ," the man says, and that is when you notice his frown. "She doesn't have a heartbeat."

You forgot to shapeshift a heart.

It will pour in quickly now, the realization that you are not a human. Humans' insides are always pounding and gurgling and flowing, and with all that happening within, it's no wonder Dr. Drakken is so easily distracted.

Drakken skims his fingers over his hair, tousling the tidiness. "Heh! Funny story about that," he says. His buoy-words are tousled, too, threatening to succumb to babble.

You step forward and interrupt. This is your responsibility, not his. "All right," you address Dr. Director. "I'm from another planet. I'm not from Lorwardia. My people don't like the Lorwardians. We – we thought they were dishonorable and wasteful."

It frightens you, to the core of the hollows you neglected to fill, that you can't readily think of anything else to say in your people's defense. "I – I can't speak for all my people," you say, "but I mean the citizens of Earth no harm."

Your gaze pleads to be dropped, but you refuse to release it. You are staring straight at the underside of Dr. Director's chin, waiting for the magnitude of what you say to sink in and send it falling.

It never does. Aside from the startle across her brow and a few wrinkles in the long breath she lets out, Dr. Director doesn't quail in the slightest.

"Ah. All right then. Thank you very much for your honesty, Lapis," she says. From this close, she is warm in a way Gems' bodies never are, and her praise has the same spare quality as Garnet's. "I do need to ask you a question, and this is just standard procedure: Are you armed in any way that could have escaped our scanners?"

You look over at the small fountain crouched in the corner of one wall, identical to the ones in some of Beach City's boardwalk shops, feeling every drop inside readying to obey you.

"I can control water." Your voice is low, oh so very tiny, and yet you know there is no danger of it disappearing. "I only do it in emergencies." You pause. "Or to show off."

There is no reproof in Dr. Director's single eye as her lip rolls in again. She repeats, "All right," as she crosses what little distance remains between you. "Would you prefer that information not leave this room?"

Since information can't seep out of the room on its own, Dr. Director must be offering to keep your secret. It is a thought that lowers the arches of your feet, rests them gently against the hardwood floor. "Yes, please, ma'am," you say.

"Then you two are free to go," Dr. Director says. She tugs the door open and wafts you through as if seeing off a ship of courageous explorers. "Enjoy the party."

You hurry from the room, down a long darkened hallway with dauntingly high ceilings. Dr. Drakken, still smiling, is right behind you.

The symbolic burn on your face spreads. "That was so embarrassing," you mutter.

"Are you kidding?" Drakken's fingers splay giddily, hands springing out to either side. "Global Justice has had their _What To Do When Encountering a Non-Hostile Alien_ manual for _generations_. Dr. Director's probably jumping up and down in her office _right now_ because she finally got to use it!"

His exuberance is out of your reach, but your spirits lift as if they, too, are powered by the wings which you will never again take for granted.

The two of you hustle down one of the wide hallways. Its scope and darkness would be ominous if not for Dr. Drakken's happy chatter by your side as he gestures to the indentations in the walls, pointing out which one is the lab where he works, which one is the storeroom, which one is the room where his intelligence test was administered. Your sight is then able to draw out the reddish undertones that match Drakken's furniture and banish all resemblance to black walls of water pinning you from all directions.

Drakken leads you into a large room, and you hope this isn't where the party will be held. Its sterile white floors are as startling as the light that burns accusingly down from uncovered bulbs. You know that you would be in no danger in this room, but you cannot imagine yourself being comfortable here either.

Fortunately, Drakken clasps your elbow and steps through a doorway that connects the large white room to a somewhat smaller one. This has none of the severity of its base: its corners are slightly rounded, like a dugout canoe, its walls are the light watery brown of Drakken's cocoa-milk, and you can feel its carpet slide serenely between your toes.

A happy sound is about to leave you, and then you look up.

The room is overflowing with humans, grouped together like clumps of kelp – all with ears and mandatory hearts and constant body temperatures.

You can almost feel your face clenching into the hard mold it takes on around those who are not Drakken or Steven. It didn't used to, but that was several freedoms ago.

You draw in air you don't need and cling to it until your sides nearly meet. Beside you, Drakken shifts his lanky weight. "Everything okay?" he asks.

"I don't know if I can do this," you say. "I don't know if I have the words."

"Oh, I tend to have wordial problems myself," Drakken says, making a point and proving it at the same time. "These people are supremely nice, and they don't mind a bit! Just be your kind self, and everything will be fine. And if you start to say something weird…I'll just bring you something to drink….or something."

 _Your kind self?_ You would hate to disappoint Drakken, but you aren't sure to what extent she still exists.

Nevertheless, you gaze at Dr. Drakken: at his hair, which the finger-marks have pulled back into their usual cheery spikes; at the smile that could be mistaken for magic from a distance; at his openness. Anything dishonest is flotsam floating on the surface, unmistakable. And you see none of it now.

"Okay," you say, giving the room a second, heartened look. You see a more thorough assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors than you were expecting – though they don't appear to be as diverse as Gems, their skin all different shades of brown, their heights all within a foot-and-a-half span, as their measurements go, there are many different varieties of humans.

You think Drakken and Steven are the most beautiful.

"Ooohh, yes!" Drakken squeals. "Let's go talk to this guy over here! Agent Kane – you know he's been an agent for over thirty years?"

"No. How would I have known that?"

Drakken directs you toward a long-bodied table, draped in green cloth and adorned with solids and liquids you guess to be human foods and drinks, over to a man whose skin is somewhere on the darker side of the spectrum. The man is aged by human standards, lines laced at the corners of his eyes and mouth, hair washed gray; and unlike you, he appears to have been gentled by the years. His nose bulges down in a curvy slope, like the handle at the barn that gives water when pumped. His uniform is the same as Dr. Director's – a blue like the sea on a night with no moon, even deeper than your eyes, which you never take from his.

As soon as he sees Drakken, the man smiles widely, launching the wrinkles into flight. "Dr. Drakken!" he says. "I see you've brought a new friend." He turns to you. "Agent Kane. Very nice to meet you."

How can he speak with such certainty so soon? "Very nice to meet _you_ ," you say. "I think. So far."

Although the lines of Drakken's neck cringe and his shoulders pin back, Agent Kane's chuckle crackles as warmly as a Ruby's fire. "Who is this charming young lady?" he says, addressing Drakken.

A reflection slithers its way through your vision. You remember Pink Diamond's long fingers threading through your hair, her voice murmuring, "Oh, Blue, she's thoroughly charming."

You aren't sure how to feel about that memory. It was a compliment, a sincere one, and yet it has the stiff, parched quality of a starfish left to dry on the shore.

"Well," you say, "I'm not young. I have been described as charming, though."

"This is Lapis Lazuli," Drakken says. "We just started dating."

You think back to Homeworld's great scientists and their methods for determining the age of a planet, and this is something you know you and Drakken have never done together. But then you see his cheeks turn Rosy-hued again, and you decide this strange phrase must have something to do with you being his _girlfriend_.

"Have you lived on Earth all your life?" you ask Agent Kane politely. "Because I just –"

"Here, Lapis, have a drink!" Drakken thrusts a plastic cup of something red and moist into your hands. You sniff it, and it surprises your nose with its sweetness. A sip of it glides down your throat.

"What's this?" you say.

"Fruit punch," Drakken says.

All you can picture is Jasper smashing watermelons.

Agent Kane is generous enough to answer you: "Yes, ma'am." He gives you the grin of a man who has been asked far worse questions.

"Sooooo…." Drakken says, his volume increasing as he nudges himself between you and Agent Kane. "Have we had any run-ins with that wily little Professor Dementor recently?" He turns to you. "Dementor is that other mad scientist I met back when I was a supervillain. And he's a…well, he's not a nice guy."

"Yes, and Dr. Drakken's been a big help in our fight against him," Agent Kane says. "He understands how that type of mind operates." He picks up an orange sliver of something that smells like the punched fruit and takes a bite. "Matter of fact, Agent Rosa saw Dementor at Smarty Mart the other day. Wasn't doing anything illegal, but there was something awful suspicious about it."

You watch the two of them from over the rim of your cup as you slowly drain it.

"Dementor wouldn't be caught _dead_ at Smarty Mart," Drakken says, and this seems an odd thing to say, because _no one_ will be caught shopping when they're dead. "He's so proud of the fact that he can afford to buy from all those expensive chain stores that…" The rest dissolves into bitter murmurs.

Agent Kane clicks his fingers off each other. "That could be it. Hey, Rosa! What was it Dementor was buying at Smarty Mart that day?"

A sturdy woman about your height hurries over, her otter-colored hair bouncing in a length similar to yours. You know now that it is called a _bob_ , and you wonder if that is why Steven called you "Bob" after he healed your gem. "Light bulbs," she says with a shake of her head. "Of all the harmless things – light bulbs."

"Incandescents?" Drakken says.

Agent Rosa taps a short fingernail, coated with something glittering and pink, against her lips. "Mmm-hmm."

The inherent softness of Drakken's chin hardens. "Bah. I've visited Dementor's lairs. He's used nothing but fluorescents for the last five years!"

Agent Rosa shakes her head gravely. It is a graveness that yields when she glances your way. "Hi there," she says. "Well, aren't you just about half-cute?"

You glance down at your sleeveless top and your gauzy skirt and the narrow inlet not covered by either. "Which half?"

"It's an expression," Drakken hisses to you.

"Oh." Should you thank her for approving of your manipulation of light?

You aren't sure; you go with a different question. "What do you like best about living in the Crystal System?"

A frown forms. "The what?" Agent Rosa says.

You still owe too much of your vocabulary to Homeworld. You clutch your empty cup until it caves beneath your fingers and you correct yourself: "The Milky Way?" That is, you believe, the name Steven gave you in one of your conversations about home and space.

Drakken shoves a refilled cup of punch back into your hands.

You immediately switch topics. "Never mind," you say, flapping a hand in the air with something less than grace. "Tell me more about Professor Dementor."

They oblige. Between sips of punch and encouraging faces from Drakken, you hear all about a funny little man who wears a mask made of metal; who insulted Drakken at every chance he got; who, although he never managed to take over the world, got away with enough human money to afford fancy machinery and his own army of Quartzlike soldiers, where Drakken's helpers were more akin to the dull-witted Ruby brigade whom you once trounced at baseball.

When Agent Kane and Agent Rosa finally drift away, Drakken waves his entire arm at them. "See you later!" he calls.

"See you later!" you echo. As far as you are concerned, you sound downright pleasant.

This enables you to turn around and wave at the next person who passes by. He seems even younger than the other humans milling around. His face is the shape of a leaf – and not the beautiful, vibrant one Steven gave you. His is narrow, symmetrical, unfriendly.

A small gloved hand clasps your shoulder. "Do _not_ go talk to Agent Du," Drakken says.

You blink at him. "Don't or do?"

"Nggghhhyyes, yes, that did sound confusing," Drakken says. "His _name_ is Agent Du, D-U, and you _shouldn't_ go talk to him. Probably. He's a bit of a snob." He rubs a hand down the back of his neck. "I don't think he's ever quite forgiven me for my…errr, past crimes."

Even now, Agent Du turns a slitting glare on Drakken and walks away in steps far higher than he needs, as though he is wading through a marsh, and you instantly dislike him for it. He reminds you one of the Gems who gave all the Elite a bad name.

"He's not worth it." The phrase is exhaled and then re-inhaled almost immediately, as if Drakken needs it too. "But – ooh – you know who is? Look at these two! They work in Lab 591 with me!"

You tip the last drop of punched fruit from your glass and follow his wild springs over to a man and a woman, both clear-eyed and sharp. The man has a tuft of additional hair on his chin, and the woman wears lenses on a chain that swings around her chest – rather uselessly, if those are meant to help her see more accurately.

"Do my eyes deceive me, or has Dr. Drakken brought a date?" the man asks.

Drakken giggles. "This is Professor Ricardo," he says, indicating the man. "And Dr. Tarrow;" he nods to the woman.

"Are you two dating too?" you ask.

Both scientists burst into laughter. "Oh, GOSH no!" says Dr. Tarrow. "We're just colleagues."

"Oh. I'm Lapis Lazuli."

Professor Ricardo strokes the hairs on his chin. "Ah," he says. "Like the gemstone."

Your wings stir with hope. "Yeah. Exactly like the gemstone," you say. "So – do you guys _like_ sleeping, or do you think it takes up too much time?"

This seems a fair question, but Drakken is suddenly beside you, urging you to drink more punch. He then hooks an arm around each of his colleagues and says, "Sooooooo….how about that Immobilizer 2000, eh? Is it off the heezy or what?"

How can he possibly say he is bad at this? you puzzle as you watch him. If he makes any mistakes – you've never heard of a "heezy" – they are smothered by the everlasting stream of words and by his general likability.

You swallow several more sips of punch while Drakken regales you with a story of a machine he helped invent. It's designed to disable an enemy's movement while not causing any serious harm to their body, which for humans you know is essential and not a mere nicety. Its progress was almost complete when "the nefarious Professor Dementor," as Drakken describes him, broke in and was inches away from stealing the Immobilizer 2000. Drakken, in a fit of desperation, smashed the machine rather than let it fall under Dementor's control. He took several punches himself in the process.

He _is_ brave, no matter what Shego says.

You listen to this story until a bell rings out and fills the room. Your legs pin beneath you, and Drakken steadies you with a smile that wiggles as though embarrassed.

"Everything's fine, Lapis," he says. "That just means it's time to sit down and eat the main course."

You, along with Dr. Drakken and the rest of the humans, are ushered toward a broad table that encompasses the entire back wall. The cloth covering it is simple and white and topped with a few dishes, the biggest of which you figure is the _main course_. Different from the raw, fleshy color of the ham, this course is beige and does not have the salted smell of the ham, either.

"Drakken?" you whisper. "What type of meat is that?"

"Turkey," he says.

Everyone lines up beside the table – you flutter yourself in between Dr. Drakken and a man whose bare scalp gleams as though about to summon a weapon – and Dr. Director hands out moonlike plates. One at a time, Drakken explains, they will move down the table and select food for their plates.

He also leans down to you and clarifies that you are to do this with the _utensils_ – small metal tools that resemble pairs of scissors, only with grabber-arms at the end instead of blades. Their handles function like the scissors: if pulled apart, the arms will go lax, and if cinched tightly, the arms will tighten and hold until the food can be transferred to the plate. This is done to prevent the spreading of germs, Drakken says, though he is quick to add that he's fairly sure you don't have any.

When it is his turn, Drakken loosens the utensils before the shaving of turkey has reached its intended destination. Noises firing from him, he stabs the utensils forward and snags the meat by the slimmest corner. You hear the great release of his lungs as he steps aside to let you go next.

You pick up the utensils – they are heavier than scissors, and the arms bang rather artlessly together. You maneuver them, handles pulled apart, to one piece of meat, clasp the handles around it and, learning from Dr. Drakken's mistakes, keep them there until there's a ribbon of turkey on your plate. It looks scant, alone on the pale emptiness of your plate, and you grab a second one, pondering how humans know what amounts of food will satisfy them. Do their hungers come in different intensities?

Vegetables are next. You fill a spoon large and long-necked enough to be several spoons fused together with peas since these, at least, you recognize.

The domed breads that follow also seem familiar. You look questioningly at Drakken; at his nod, you drop one on your plate as well.

Once you reach the end of the line, you are curved around and seated in several amply-cushioned chairs. The carpet kisses your feet like fresh early patches of grass.

The turkey turns out not to be as juicy as the ham. It tastes more of heat than flavor and strings dryly, almost all moisture leeched from it, leaving behind just a hint to tease you. It is neither bad enough to spit into your napkin nor good enough to eat your second piece.

Drakken's colleagues fall into effortless chatter, speaking of baseball games and weather and telling what must be jokes, judging by the expectant final notes and the laughter that rises immediately afterward. You trail one toe along the carpet. These people are Dr. Drakken's other friends. You do not feel obligated to treat them with kindness, yet you _want_ to treat them with kindness. But that has sunken so far down inside you, submerged beneath myriad impurities.

You turn to Dr. Drakken, the one person here who understands you fully. "So how are the repairs coming on the…Immobilizer 2000?" you ask, fighting to lift the words from your instinctive hush.

Drakken beams across every part of his face, up to his hairline and right down to the rest of his body, and you know you remembered the name correctly. "Oh, just swimmingly!" he says. "We've rebuilt much of the framework already, and we should be ready to move onto the more intricate work by Dece – in three months," he corrects himself.

You slip your hand beneath the tablecloth and squeeze his in appreciation. Even underwater, you could measure the passing of time by the temper of the tides, but the humans' names for their months are still an enigma to you.

"And we'll be taking security measures to avoid another Dementor incident," Professor Ricardo adds. "The machine will become nonresponsive if handled by an unknown individual." Just for a moment, his glance rests on his fingerprints, and it is the first bit of shared information that has actually engaged you. "We're still debating whether to have it whitelisted or blacklisted."

You have no idea what monochrome has to do with this, until Drakken interjects, "A blacklist means that there would be a list of people who are absolutely _not_ allowed to handle it, and if you're on the list, it won't work. A whitelist means there would be a list of people who _are_ allowed to handle it, and if you're _not_ on that list, it won't work." He nods wisely. "They both have their pros and cons."

Though you can't summon much interest for this high-tech security system, you are able to find another question: "But what if he's wearing gloves?"

The skin underneath Drakken's eyes buckles. "Ah, yes. We've considered that. No perfect solution has been proposed yet."

Professor Ricardo rests his cup of punched fruit on a small brown disc at the head of his plate. "There are many infrared scanners that can identify a person just from one quick look at their eyes. But they'd be awfully cumbersome to place into our little portable ray." He puts a hand to his mouth and performs the one-body symphony – quietly, as though he has little faith in his talents.

He did not do it as well as Drakken did, but you should still be polite, now that you finally have an opportunity to be. You rise from your chair and applaud him. "Bravo!" you say.

One of Drakken's hands clamps on your wrist, and the other shoves your own punch cup at you. "Lapis, sit down."

"But don't you hear what he did?" you say.

"No, Lapis, seriously, _sit down_." Drakken's tone has a faint sway, as though tears are pressing on it. He is pink again, and not a favorable pink this time; his frame pulls inward as though he is trying to reduce his presence.

There is a black silence. Not even a whisper stirs the surface. There is only the near-inaudible hum of the overhead lights, shivering in their sockets.

For a moment, you wonder why the cup you're holding trembles so violently.

The last thing you want is to look at the rest of the humans, but to keep your gaze from sweeping over them is beyond the scope of even your powers. Each contorted, nerve-wracked face is a wave knocking against you, assaulting you with sprays of foam. The only facet that stands out is Agent Du, his nostrils pinched slits.

You sink like a felled tree into your seat again, your physical form a void, made real only by the vital bump between your shoulder blades. One more spray of foam breaks over you:

 _I've been tricked._ You offered what little trust you have left and received a bomb in return.

Peridot would have labeled you a "clod," and she probably would have been right.

Drakken arises now, his hands stroking the air as if he can soothe the dissonance standing in it. "So sorry, everyone," he says with a cough. "She's…from another culture."

"You mean a culture where it's a compliment to burp at the table?" says the man with the gleaming scalp.

"No," Drakken says, "actually a culture where they don't eat at all."

The room falls soundless once more. You hear nothing but Drakken's restricted breathing. You would not have heard the uniformed woman otherwise when she turns to her date and asks, "Is she anorexic?"

You stand. It is a difficult feat beneath the weight of a thousand human eyes, staring at you as if you're the Cluster itself, quaking the planet beneath them. You call back the last few droplets of courtly haughtiness you still possess and lift your chin. "All right," you say. "I'll just go ahead and tell you. I'm from another planet.

"I'm not from Lorwardia," you say for the second time tonight. You face the whispering woman. "And I'm not from Anorexia, either."

You press against the back wall and feel yourself turn to glass: you are hard; you are vulnerable; you can cut anyone to pieces if they break you.

Kindness is impossible now. The only thing to do is run, straight out the door into the room with the overly sanitized floors that would meet Pearl's approval but dizzy you and drive you to a corner where you churn your teeth together.

Softened footsteps stumble behind you. The clumsy gait is distinguishable even before someone calls your name, at the same time cradling it the way only Drakken and Steven ever have.

Drakken's warmth pauses before you. "Oh, Lapis, I'm so sorry," he blubbers. "I'm so sorry – I didn't mean to embarrass you. I tried to –"

You shove your hands upward to cut him off. " _You_ didn't embarrass me," you say. Your voice hardens, descends, and you prop it in front of you as a shield. "Shego did."

"Shego?" Drakken says. "She's not even here. How could she –"

"She told me when humans make – that noise – it's a one-person symphony," you mutter. "So I stood up and clapped for that guy to be _nice_ , because I was dumb enough to believe her, but obviously it's _really_ one of those noises like the one that makes Steven laugh, and now all your human friends know that I'm nothing like them."

The blackest parts of Drakken's eyes collide before he blinks them into understanding. An instant later, they cloud over with rancor. It is a look he wears seldom but with much experience.

And you do not believe it's directed at you.

Sure enough, Drakken's brow forms a bottomless frown, which he drags down over the rest of his face with his open palm. Nonsense noises springs from him, punctuated with cries of, "Ohhhh, She _go_!" He pulls the black-shelled phone from his pocket, flips it open, and delivers a series of aggressive hits to the keys.

This room, with its unsheathed bulbs blaring off the cloud-white floor and its vague hum in the background, begins to transform into a large-scale version of the Interrogation Chamber back on Homeworld, but this time you will not cower in a corner under Jasper's threats. This time, you fix your gaze and harden it. You could stand up to an Agate herself right now.

Drakken stomps several feet away from you, the soft soles of his boots pelting the floor like heavy rainfall. Even so, you can hear angry snippets of his conversation: "…what were you _thinking_?" and "…owe her an apology," and "…over here RIGHT NOW – please," along with five or six more exclamations of "Ngggh!"

How much time passes between his request and Shego's obedience, you can't say. You lock yourself in a chair and grip your elbows with your fingernails, while Drakken spends the time pacing the ground and occasionally rolling looks your way that are apologies in and of themselves. You turn away from them; the last thing you want now is pity.

At last, Shego enters the room in one fluid motion that would have you believe that she, too, can fly, that she can match you in every regard. Bitterness wallows below your midriff. Her lies were jetsam, sunken and buried and strewn with coral until indistinguishable from the landscape.

Surprisingly, she stands in the doorway for a moment, the muscles in her arms tweaking as though they aren't accustomed to doing whatever it is she is about to do. Dr. Drakken greets her with a scowl, pushed out into a pout by the outcrop of his lower lip. His skin boasts pink splotches down to where his collar hugs his neck, and it leavens you that it is on your behalf.

Drakken jabs a finger toward the table where you sit, and Shego flounces into the adjacent chair.

A surfeit of retorts has already cropped up in your mind – _You think you're so special, don't you, with your superpowers? Well, guess what, you're not. You're just another oxygen breather. Your lifespan is nothing. And you see that box with the water spout over there? I could rip that out of the wall and drown you in three minutes if I wanted to._

But the last time words such as those issued from your mouth, it was green and Jasper was manipulating it.

Rather, you bow your legs on the underneath side of the chair and lapse into a Diamond-hard silence. Shego glances your way, and the fine-hewn Emerald eyes actually fall at the corners. It is suspect; everything about her is suspect, and you did not know it until it was too late.

Only because showing her your back means placing your gem at risk do you remain facing her.

"I believe you two have something to discuss!" Drakken's fresh voice is taut, the strings of his buoy-words about to snap. He curls his hands somewhere on the railing of his torso. "And I'm staying here to make sure one of you doesn't melt the other, and one of you doesn't drown the other – and I don't think I need to specify which is which!"

You eye the water-box on the wall for a long minute.

Shego whisks some hair from her forehead. "Okay, so I'm a jerk," she says.

You look at her. "Does that mean you're mean?"

"Yeah."

"Then yes," you say, "you are."

Shego's throat writhes against a laugh. Her amusement makes you even smaller, makes you even more of a danger.

"Look." Shego arranges her fingers into a perfect Peridot screen without detaching a single one. "I tease the people I like. Not everybody believes that, because I also tease the people I hate."

You cannot hold back the deluge any longer. "I tease the people I like, too, but not like that!" Your voice isn't a shield anymore; it's a sword, and you stab it into her. "Not in a way that embarrasses them in front of hundreds of people! Not in a way that ruins their only chance to make a good first impression!"

"Hey, hey, whoa!" Shego waves her hands, in mismatched gloves that are too similar to Jasper's. "Hear me out, 'kay?"

You fall silent again, flaring the slits in your nose out to either side.

"I do stuff like this to Dr. D all the time," Shego says. "And he'll buy it for about two minutes before he realizes I'm playin' him. And since you seemed a lot more sensible than he does –"

"I _heard_ that," Drakken huffs from nearby.

"I _know_ ," Shego responds, then resumes speaking to you as if no interruption has occurred. "–I thought it wouldn't even take you _that_ long to catch on." She sighs. "Didn't even occur to me – doy – you're an alien. You got no way to figure it out."

You say nothing.

"Ah, geez, Lapis…I'm sorry," Shego says.

This startles your gaze back to her, and she doesn't look magisterial anymore. Regret lies submissively across features that don't look as though they'd submit to anymore.

You look at her, green and angled, and you see Peridot, shamelessly begging for your absolution. And when you glance at Dr. Drakken and his hopeful smile, you see Steven, scarcely able to breathe at the thought that two of his friends might despise each other. Something moves inside you.

"Well – um – I – I appreciate it. Thanks," you say, and you rise to your feet. Something moves inside you, and it keeps moving. This is not the normal feeling of food. _All_ of the sand has trickled to the absolute bottom of the hourglass and liquefied, brimming and ready to overflow.

You gasp and slam your legs together.

"Whoa," Shego says. "You okay there, squirt?"

The last word throws you prostrate across the table, and all you can see, all you can feel, is water, so much water, everywhere, all around you. Your world recedes in fear, and not of Shego with her fiery hands and her jetsam lies – fear of this thing you rattle inside that has never gripped your body before.

"Dr. Drakken?" you say. "I – I think I'm sick." You have never been sick in your life, and while it cannot compare to the lacerating agony of a cracked gem, it stirs with the thought of you having contracted a human disease until you have to fist your fingers in your skirt to keep from crying out.

"Oh no oh no oh gosh oh sweet baby gherkins! What's wrong?" Drakken says. His voice is a panic barely contained.

You scrape yourself from the tabletop and straighten the best you can; you don't want to worry him on top of everything else. "I – I feel like I'm clogged up with water," you say. "It hurts to move. It feels like it's going to burst." You fold your legs tighter. "And I didn't even know there was an _organ_ down there!"

The terror recedes into the blackness of Drakken's eyes, then returns in a new form. "Ohhhhhhh. No, it's okay, Lapis, you're not sick. You – um – errrr – you…need to go to the bathroom."

You stare at him. "How?"

Drakken's flinch is deep. "Ohhhh, my entire life just flashed before my eyes," he says.

It seems that, even outside the mirror, you have a knack for doing this.

Dr. Drakken inhales, a wheezing attempt at composure, and arcs his arm around your back so he can guide without touching, same as he did so many months ago. "Well – uhh – first stop is to _find_ a bathroom," he hedges. "I think there are some down this hall…"

You are almost afraid to move, and yet you have no choice. You mince down the hall after him, while he grumbles beneath his breath, scolding himself for all those cups of punch he had you drink. With those mutters, this horrid thing begins to make sense, which is very little consolation.

After what seems far too long, especially for Earth, Drakken halts before two parallel signs hanging from a wall as gray as slate. The sign to which he gestures reads _Women_ ; its corresponding blocky figure has hair that swoops down to the chin, like yours, and a skirt that flares out below the knees, like yours.

Dr. Drakken nudges you gingerly with his knuckles, as though he is afraid of what his touch could provoke. Rather than a hanging door, this entrance is composed of a series of diagonal walls, which you navigate to find yourself facing an elongated room, a duller white than the one you just left, the tiles beneath cooler. One entire wall is occupied by small, rectangular capsules, each strung with a door about half the usual width and stamped with a silver bolt.

"All right. Okay." Drakken breathes shallowly. "You see all those stalls?"

The unfamiliar word drags across the room before it coalesces with the things you cannot identify. "You mean those little rooms?" you ask.

"Yes, exactly! Those! You need to go into one of them."

Drakken's speech is as tentative as his touch, punctured by doubt. But that doubt is wrong: you have survived in far more claustrophobic quarters than these, and your stride toward the nearest half-door is purposeful.

"Okay," you say. "I'm in."

"You need to shut it and lock it behind you!"

You do as he advises. One step backward and your leg thumps against something solid, something reinforced as though with stone. You execute a fractional spin in the narrow space and see a white vent rising from the floor, its jawbone jutting as though patterned off Drakken's, its rim forked around a basin of water that ripples up at you in sympathy. A shrill noise collects in your throat, and you force it back down.

"All right. Now what?" you say.

"Now you just stand – no, no, nooooooo, wait! Sit! You need to sit!" Drakken's voice sounds farther away and is rapidly dissolving.

"Sit on _that_?" It looks so unwelcoming compared to anything on which you've ever been invited to sit, even on this planet, cold and impersonal under the fuzzy lights.

"Yes," Drakken says. "You need to touch it with – nnmog – just your skin, so you'll need to, err, hike up your skirt…or something…"

"Oh, I can just shapeshift it away," you offer.

"NGGGGGH BLCKK!"

Drakken's buoy-words devolve into the static of a Wailing Stone transmission, and you have no port that connects, no means of translating it.

Fear is in you and has started to curl you when a second voice, one whose owner you did not even hear approach, speaks: "All right, calm down, Dr. D. Lemme take it from here."

A set of boots, one green and one black, moves into view beneath the door, and you hear Shego slap her palms together. The waves plaguing your lower half won't allow you to protest.

"All right, girlfriend. Let's get this done," Shego says. Her strangely bright voice is a beacon through the waves, and you have no choice but to sail toward it. "Do like the man said – skirt off and hop right on up."

The rim is not as hardy as it looks and shifts hazardously under your legs, even when you clamp a viselike hand on either side. "What if I can't do it?" There is audible frailty in your question, and you wish you could knock it away, prevent it from reaching Shego.

"Look," Shego says, "I don't understand how your alien biology works –"

Actually, at this point, you're not convinced you're any more knowledgeable than she is.

" – but the fact that you need to go means your body's taking care of this naturally," Shego finishes. If she holds any contempt for you, it has drifted to the bottom with everything else she would prefer you not know. "So here's what let's do…"

Her instructions are clear and precise. Soon everything is better.

Under Shego's direction, you stand up and give the squiggling silver pole that juts from the vent a firm tug downward. Like an inverted geyser, the basin sets up a whoosh; the water spirals out of it, and something new and beautiful rotates back in. A smile comes to roost on your face, no coaxing required.

"Now do whatever you need to do," Shego says, and you imagine her sharp-nailed hands chopping the air, "to get your skirt back on. 'Cuz it'd kinda be a bad thing if you walked out of here without it."

You put two fingerprints to your hip and it is immediately swathed again in fabric, all the way down to where it hovers teasingly at your ankles. " _Yeah_ , because I'm _stupid_ ," you say with a laugh.

The silence is a weapon suspended in midair.

"Look, the sarcasm is adorable," Shego says at last. "And I'd be the last one to tell you not to use it. But it's a little raw." For a moment, her words strip from their hard casings, like the Earth-insects Steven told you are called _cicadas_. "You still feel things. That's not easy to get back once you've let it go."

You press on the diamond below your neckline, surprised at the tautness you feel underneath. The hollows of you are once again hollow, and somehow they hardened without you ever noticing.

Slowly, you unbolt the door and hop aside as it swings inward to permit your exit.

Shego is waiting for you. She does not say a word, but even though her age measures decades, not eons, she suddenly seems as old as you and far wiser. She catches your elbow before you can run for the door and spurs you to a sink where, she explains, your hands are to be washed because "public bathrooms are _high_ on the nasty factor."

You turn the knobs on the side of the sink, and water trickles dependably out. It submits to your fingertips as it always has, a fluency that once comforted.

And as you pump a box on the wall for soap, you see what you have done, what you must rescind before it causes any further damage.

Energy seems to hum under Shego's skin, and yet she effects a casual slouch that rivals Amethyst's beside you. "That's probably long enough," she says after a minute. "You don't actually need to scrub down to the bone."

Not until she straightens to steer you toward another box do you realize that she had propped herself against the mirror.

This second box dispenses disposal scraps of paper, sliced thin, that you dry your hands on. They roll from the box, one at a time, with the turn of a gear on the box's side. When you pry one free, it seems to puff with relief and gently folds over your hands.

Shego watches as you drift the paper across each finger in turn. You aren't ready to speak to her yet, but you can feel the beginnings of forgiveness in your smile, and you hope they're visible too.

The two of you exit the bathroom to find Dr. Drakken pacing in a lopsided circle between the two signs, his breathing jagged and his hair in nervous spines. Flower petals ring his head again, and he doesn't appear to have noticed yet. When he sees you, he glows to match their vivid color and his sigh nearly topples him.

"So….everything went okay?" Drakken asks. His voice peaks at the end, as if the buoys are being slammed into rocks again and again, and the glow on his face slides into its brightest pink yet.

You take stock of yourself – no cracks to your gem – and shrug.

Shego's eyes sparkle. "Add that to the list of things that weren't in my job description – toilet-trained your girlfriend."

"Oh, come on." You give her a marginal shove. "It wasn't _that_ bad, was it?"

Shego's shoulder blades twitch; they do not cup her life between them and are able to jerk freely with her amusement. "Well, she caught on quicker than the puppy, I'll say that much."

You laugh because Shego is laughing too, around the edges of lips as dark and plump as her hair, the strangest lips you have yet seen on a human. She seems almost as grateful for the disappearance of enmity as you are.

"Oh, thank goodness!" Dr. Drakken says. He drags one wrist across his upper lip, relieving it of a sheen of sweat. His petals wobble.

You turn to him. "You've got a little something – right _there_ ," you say, dabbing at your own neck.

"Wha?" Drakken gropes above his collar until he hits the petal and groans. His eyes cross, then roll, and finally squint shut as he plucks his petals.

It is a humorous sight, particularly accompanied as it is by Drakken's wind-chopped noises. The tension ebbs back to the borders of your gem, and it doesn't return until Drakken, now clear of plants, says, "Okay – so – Lapis – what say you? Should we go back to the party? Yay or nay?"

The question is a gentle one, not the type with the stone hammer at one end meant to tip you toward one answer over the other, the type that he is prone to asking. He looks at you, so open and ingenuous and ungainly, and you cannot bring yourself to ruin his evening; you have ruined far too many things already, for others and for yourself.

You look up at Drakken. You don't have to force a smile, not when you can see the perkiness of his ears, the forward-surge of his neck, and the energy he can only contain with great effort. "Yay," you say. _Nay_ , you remember, is an outdated way of saying no, so you presume _yay_ is yes, though it sounds more like something Steven yells in excitement. "I want to try."

"Great! Oh, that's simply –" Drakken catches his grin before it can overwhelm the accommodating folds of his face. "I mean – are you sure? Because if you're not up to it, I can just say goodbye, and we can leave."

The softness threatens to coddle you, and you step away from it and its dirtied memories. "No," you say. "I think this is something I need to do."

"Good, then." Drakken appears somewhat confused, but one of his small hands finds yours and hugs it. "I'll be right here – well, _there_ – I'll be in the room with you…"

You take a playful swat at the bramble of hair. "I know what you mean."

"Well, I guess I'm gonna split then," Shego says. "Ciao."

"Goodbye?" you wager, hoping that's what she means. She is not a fusion, so of course she can't really _split_.

Shego winks and nods. And then she is gone, as cleanly as though she has warped herself away.

The pressure of Dr. Drakken's fingers, spindly though they may be, is strengthening as the two of you walk across the room of wideswept white where no one will be interrogating you. While the ground still feels unstable under you, you are able to place trust in your wings again.

Drakken's glances at you are so frequent, his thick eyebrow crouched so low over his eyes, that he doesn't navigate very well, and his elbow meets the doorway before you can warn him. He yelps in a voice wrung by pain, and you forget all hopes of a quiet entrance. Human heads swivel your way, and it doesn't matter until you ask Drakken if he's okay and receive a shaken "yes" in return.

You glance upward then and view the humans seemingly from a grand distance, as though observing them through the gauze draped around Blue Diamond's palanquin. That was never your favorite view. They are no longer seated at the table, instead scraping plates into large sacks of throwaways and refilling punch glasses and milling around in small groups.

All it takes is one look at them: you immediately try to fashion an aloof line with your mouth, but you lack Shego's expertise and you feel it falter between your cheeks. Your gaze, however, has solidified; your blinks feel stiff.

There is a wariness in the air, and yet no open hostility. Certainly not wanting to instigate any, you jerk your attention toward one of the water-boxes on the wall and then quickly abate when you sense its contents begin to ice over in their pipes.

Agent Kane, already near the door, comes closer. His uniform is still smooth enough to earn a Pearl's approval, despite all the opportunities for spills dinner presented, but there's nothing regimented about his walk. He stops within a few meters of you and smiles at you as though you deserve it.

"Young lady," Agent Kane says, "you ran out of here before I had a chance to say that any friend of Dr. Drakken's is a friend of mine." He tilts his gray head. "If you want to be, that is."

A little boy giggles in your memory. Its register is louder than Jasper's rasping persuasion.

"Yes," you say softly. "I want to be. I'm just not very good at it yet."

Drakken also giggles, only it sounds on the cusp of tears.

When Agent Kane looks at you, it is not a desire to send in probes that you see. It is the same bright curiosity that never leaves Drakken, the urge that Steven has to know everything so that he can befriend it. "Do you miss your home planet?" he asks.

A sky that never darkens with thunderclouds. A view that spans seven different galaxies if caught at the right moment. A people with which you were proud to belong.

Prongs of pain stab inside you. Each one aches to cry out in biting words that will take it away – _No, of COURSE not! Why would I miss the only home I've ever had?_

But a great invisible fist closes around the words and steals them away. You can almost feel the sharpness of its fingernails inside its gloves.

You don't know if you'd be able to do it without Drakken and his clumsy smile, but you glance at him and are able to shed the tight crush of – what Shego did call it – sarcasm. "Yes," you say, rubbing your fingerprints together. "Yeah. I miss it a _lot_."

It is the second unexpected release of the night, and for an instant it is as though you have poured ocean water in it, compounding the hurt.

Agent Kane nods. Sympathy breaks and mends the lines on his forehead. "How could you not?" he says, maybe more to himself and less to you.

The drapery begins to tear away, pained rips, and yet you think you glimpse something very close to freedom on the other side.

* * *

The next day, you set out to rectify your mistake.

When you tell Dr. Drakken what it is you want to do, he mists over with something you believe is close to pride and within instants has prepared the hovercraft to accompany your flight.

Ron Stoppable answers the door himself. His shoulders pull forward like pieces of wire when he sees that it's you, and you force through the degradation.

"Hi, Ron," you say in the most civil tone you can tow in. "Can we come in?"

The brown in Ron's eyes stretches wide, but he scoots the door open just enough for you and Drakken to slip in.

Without hesitation, Dr. Drakken plants himself on the couch; part of you covets his ability to feel at home so quickly in such a variety of places. As you motion Ron into the kitchen, your own legs seem to belatedly grapple with Earth's gravity, and you are grateful for the chair which Ron offers you.

Ron sinks into the chair opposite yours, his long legs splayed across the floor, the toes of his gray shoes pointed outward. Next to a nearly empty glass of water, a creature covered by only fibers of hair and a plump tuck of pink skin sits on the table before him. It is the third pink animal you've seen, and by far the smallest, not any longer than a pencil.

You begin with a question: "Are you still afraid of me?"

" _Afraid_?" Ron begins an incredulous laugh and does not finish it. "A-afraid? Gee, I – I – I – when was I – I – I – well, gee!" He taps his forehead. "You tell me, lady!"

His use of the word _lady_ has Amethyst's flippant edge, and you have to regulate a breathing pattern before you can answer. "See, that's what I needed to talk to you about," you say, quickly before you can see the fear. "I can't read your mind."

"You can't?" Ron repeats. And then again, in a sturdier pitch: "You _can't_? Then – but all those things you – how did you know?"

Now what is boiling from him is impossible to miss unless you shut your eyes, so you do. "Lucky guesses," you say. "Or I read your _face_. It's very expressive. Like Dr. Drakken's."

There is a thick silence.

Although you have not swallowed anything since daybreak, it feels as if an anchor is lodged in your voids. "I tricked you….and I'm sorry," you say. "I know I shouldn't have done that, because someone else tricked _me_ , and it could have gotten me into a real mess. I just – I guess it just hurt so much that you'd decided right away you couldn't trust me, just because I was from another planet."

You peek between your eyelids. Ron has blanched, all the way out to the tips of his ears. For the first time, you notice how large and comical they are, also similar to Drakken's.

"Ohhhhhhh man," he says. "Aw, that musta seriously tanked for you, huh?"

The word has no meaning to you, not as a verb at least, and yet you want to believe the slope in his voice means well. "I didn't like it, if that's what you mean," you say carefully.

Ron nods. "And, dude, that's not even your fault. Not really. It's those Lowardian jerks…"

"Them again?"A well-engineered hatred surfaces at their mention, and you push it back down. "Look, I know they invaded your planet and wrecked your town – my people don't like them either, if that makes you feel any better. And Drakken told me they destroyed your favorite restaurant, but they're rebuilding really fast, so –"

"You think I'm this upset about _Bueno Nacho_?" Ron says. The sun-speckles burn like solar flares.

The pink creature chirps something from the tabletop. Ron's tongue whips against the back of his teeth with a _chah_. "All right, I'll admit it, maybe in my younger days," he says. "But this is so not about that anymore! It's about Kim!"

His words are comets, screeching, steaming, soaring. The last one is the hottest, and you grab it. "Kim? They did something to your girlfriend?"

Ron slumps in his seat and begins to kick the table until the water in the glass bucks in tandem with the heaving of his chest. "They kidnapped her 'n' Drakken – took them up into a spaceship. But me and Shego went and got 'em back, no major drama there. It was AFTER –" his eyes drift so far away that you almost expect them to turn blank and silver – "after they knew they couldn't win."

You already hear your people's stories, heralding the return of cracked Commanders, the ones who were lucky enough to come back – for a Lowardian never admits defeat without claiming a trophy. "What did they do?" you say.

"They knocked her out," Ron says, his foot descending to scuff the floor. "All I remember is the Big Dude In Charge sayin', 'You can have this one for a trophy. She will look lovely stuffed and mounted next to your Thembrian spine.' Holdin' her upside-down by the _leg_." His throat wrenches. "Best friends for twelve years, and I never saw her look tiny like that."

So they took Thembria after all.

You look at Ron. His fists are wadded in front of him on the table, the nails livid in color. No doubt he sees his girlfriend, his best friend, still and silently compliant with a Lorwardian commander's remorseless grip. The memory of one that nearly matches it simmers on your own ankle.

Ron's fear and yours mingle together until your arms ache for Plastic Lazuli. You do not speak for a minute, and when you do it is as tiny as a seed. "Drakken didn't tell me about _that_."

"Drakken didn't _see_ that!" Ron says. "He was off savin' the world. . . it's weird how that's actually starting to sound right…"

"It always sounded right to me," you say. You smile faintly at him, and he returns it with a compressed, grim one.

You let that rest for a moment and then ask, "So…what happened then?"

"Well," Ron scrubs at the back of his neck as though suddenly embarrassed, "turns out my Mystical Monkey Power kicked in –"

"Your Mystical _what_ Power?"

"Long story," Ron says.

Not wanting to exhaust any more of his already-abridged lifespan, you nod him on.

" – and basically I got superstrength and could kick any butt I wanted kicked, and I – I got rid of the Lowardians."

 _Got rid of how?_ is too personal a question to ask of someone who is not yet your friend. You see the downturn of his mouth and feel the echo of pain.

"So…aliens are one of your triggers," you say. You hope you sound even half as understanding as Dr. Drakken did that day at the barn.

The pain on Ron's face dims from the ears inward, and the kindness you thought you sensed earlier rolls in to take its place. "Yeah," he says after a second. "Yeah, somethin' like that."

"I'm _so_ sorry, then," you say. "I never would've pranked you if I'd known."

The remembered hold around your ankle releases. It leaves behind an emptiness you cannot fathom.

"My people had a war, too," you offer him. The word's serration grazes the curve of your gem like a weapon. "So I know how awful it is. They fought over humanity."

Ron pushes the glass across the table with a shuffling sound that reminds you of the wind through trees; you picture the new warm hues gradating the leaves, and it fortifies you. "Heh. Uh….which side were you on?" he asks. He regards you with a stranger's blankness, but at least his eyes no longer charge you with crimes.

"Neither one," you tell him. "I just got in the way." Shivers line your throat as an unbidden reflection floats up: Never-ending hordes of Quartz soldiers, striding forward in martial lines; the Crystal Gems with their haphazard, motley army; the definitive swish of sword against projected flesh, preceding the clink of a stone tumbling in isolation to the ground.

Ron's nod is slow and timid, scrunching into his neck and then back out. It stalls the reflection, brings it to a hitch before it can progress to the multicolored ropes of hair slithering toward you.

No trickery survives in you now. "I never liked humans," you admit. "But I never hated them either.

"And now that I've met Dr. Drakken and spent time here on Earth, I. . . I realize your species deserves a chance. So I'm going to try to give you one."

You do not add, _Can you do the same for me?_ You are already a bare wire, needing to avoid further exposure. It is challenge enough to stare at him over the table's metallic glint and show him what you look like when you are candid.

Ron stares back at you. For the first time ever, his gaze claps to yours. There is the tiniest commencement of a truce in it.

The little pink-skinned creature bobs his head, paws held up beseechingly.

All of the light that makes your body relaxes, and you fall back against the chair. You are weightless again, relieved of spite.

Ron tips back in his chair as well. Tide pools have formed in the inner arms of his bagging shirt. "So…you don't really have any weird alien powers?" he says.

You grin, and it has the feel of rusted hinges finally being put to use again. "Well, I don't know if I'd say _that_."

Curling your fingers in toward each other like the corners of an ancient scroll, you elevate the water from Ron's glass. Without ever approaching you, it flows through you and melds with you until you are part of it. The bond is instinctual and cooling, and the water conjures a hand almost before you can visualize one.

Your hand flattens out, palm up, fingerprints straight, nails pointed to the ceiling, and the water-hand mimics you without hesitance. You drift it over to Ron and suspend it in the air next to his own arm. "High-five?" you say.

The centers of Ron's eyes thin out before the lids slap shut over them. His chair tips over backward and spills him across the floor tiles, where his head lolls heavily to one side.

The tiny pink animal spouts a frantic squeal of gibberish.

You drop the water-hand with a splash on the table as you lean over. "Dr. Drakken?" you call into the living room. "He fell asleep really fast. Is that normal?"


	16. Sick

**~Hello again! I've finally gotten most of the bugs (pun not intended) out this chappie, I think.**

 **In other news, I've posted a Lapis music video on YouTube, if you wanna go check it out. Not sure if it's kosher to share the link or not, but if you search _Steven Universe "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again"_ I'm 99% sure it'll be the first result. ;)**

 **Thanks to everyone who's been reading! Would love to hear from you.**

 **And now, an alien learns about puking.~**

You go the rest of the night and most of the next morning without seeing Dr. Drakken.

Usually he shows up on his mother's doorstep fairly soon after the sun asserts its dominance over the other stars' light. But today, you wait and wait and read more of the digestion magazine, becoming absorbed in an article about exotic plants, only to finish it thinking of Drakken and look up to find he has still not arrived. Eventually, you make the short flight to his house to make sure nothing has gone amiss overnight.

Dr. Drakken answers the door-chime. His skin, which normally matches the friendly blue of the sky overhead, is instead tinged with thunderous gray, and black half-circles orbit his eyes in wider patterns than usual. When he sees you, however, his weak attempt at a grin is at least sincere.

"What time is it?" is his greeting, accompanied by a bleary blink.

You glance up at the sun, about three-quarters of the way through its ascent, and shrug. "Morning. Late morning, I think."

"Oh. Well, come on in." Drakken takes a step back, glances at the timepiece on his arm, and waves you through the door. "Wow...late morning, all right. Sorry about that. I'm just not feeling very well."

You glance at his sensitive little fingertips, not sheltered behind gloves today. "You're having trouble feeling things?" you say. It concerns you – while you are all too familiar with the numbness of defunct emotions, you have never lost your sense of touch before.

The strained smile reaches a little farther up. "No, I can still feel," Drakken says as he trudges out of the entry hall and toward the living room. "It's just what I feel isn't good."

You feel your brows gather. "What's wrong?"

"My throat hurts, for one thing."

"Maybe you just need to cry," you suggest. "That's the only time when my throat hurts."

"Oh, believe me, I get that." Drakken settles himself on the couch in wobbly fashion, his legs coming to roost on a crease between two of the cushions. "But it's not that type of pain. It's more of…do you know what's it like to get sand in your eye? Is that something that happens to Gems?"

You wince and nod. The removal process is easy enough, but the flaw always rankles your vision, sometimes enough to water.

"Well, this is like I have sand stuck in my _throat_ ," Drakken says.

His voice seems to confirm that. The buoy-words wallow in shallow water, in an airless place where they cannot bob.

"And my stomach's a bit upset," Drakken adds. His lips are dried-out husks that will hardly part for him.

"About what?" you say. Humans have a much closer bond with their bodies than Gems do, and from what you can tell it's not unheard of for their emotions to resonate all the way down into their organs.

Drakken's chuckle quickly deteriorates into a thick cough. "No, I don't mean _upset_ like it's mad at me. It just hurts, too."

He rests a grudging hand on his midsection, and you cannot miss the discomfort that stands out in strings from his neck. An ache forms around the sides of your gem.

"Are you going to be okay?" you say. You perch beside him on the couch's soft reddish limb and squint at him. "Do you need to go see – what are those things called again? Doctors? Do you need to see doctors? You look exhausted."

You speak as calmly as you can. Drakken _does_ look exhausted, the exhaustion of someone whose limbs have been bound for months and for whom all the energy in the universe isn't enough to keep them above water anymore. There is no time for the reflections that wish to swarm you, and you command your mind-tide to carry them back out.

Dr. Drakken cringes as though being ushered into a dungeon. "Maybe I will. See a doctor, that is. If it's not better soon." He claps, and then his face brightens with a pale resemblance to its typical happiness. "In the meantime, I don't feel up to going anywhere with you – _but_! I thought we could take advantage of this opportunity to show you some nifty old cartoons!"

A _cartoon_ , you know, means it is _animated_ , which means that humans construct it from pictures they've drawn and, by some means, set them to moving. It is technology, you are fairly certain, and yet sometimes you can almost believe it to be magic, when it is done well.

The cartoon Drakken shows you is _not_ done well. The characters bend with jerky suddenness and often appear to teleport to the other side of the screen in a single movement, across a background that rarely changes. One man's hair changes color from scene to scene.

It stars a pack of youngish humans, perhaps about Kim and Ron's age, and a burly brown creature that looks more wolfish than Commodore Puddles but behaves even less so, cowering in corners whenever he hears a threatening noise. They live in a van even more garishly colored than Greg's, which they drive around to solve mysteries, most of them involving types of creatures that have never been proven to exist on Earth. In the first – _episode_ , Drakken tells you the installments are called – that he chooses to show you, they happily descend into a mine tunnel, to the depths where your non-sentient relatives are created. The natives of the area have been scared away by an alien who's made the mine his home.

That word – _alien_ – lodges right into your core, as it always does, and drops only when the alien is referred to as "him." It's not one of your people, then.

The "alien" himself appears onscreen not five Earth-minutes later, lashing out with his arms as though in punishment.

"Is that a Kanatar?" you ask, frowning. "Because that's a pretty good drawing – the nose is perfect – but their foreheads are usually a little taller and their eyes aren't so big –"

Dr. Drakken shrugs rather than speaking and then begins to cough again. You can practically hear the sand sluicing up and down in his throat, a sound that skids across your shoulder blades.

"Citizens of Earth!" the alien bellows. "You are no longer welcome here! Leave or suffer the wrath of the cosmos!"

Your frown expands. A Kanatar's roar does not generally have that quality of static to it, and they don't tend to speak such coherent sentences, though you suppose there are always exceptions. Regardless, no one cosmic race, much less a lone _member_ of that race, would have the authority to enact the wrath of the entire cosmos.

If anyone could have, it would have been your people, and that didn't happen.

The alien chases the young Earthlings and their dog around for a while: crisscrossing into different tunnels, rushing them only to trip on the various objects they thrust in its path, popping up behind them just as the leader says, "I think he's gone." The wolf yips, yelps, and says an occasional discernible phrase. You're not sure you would label it _nifty_ , but your thoughts are engaged enough not to drift to Dr. Drakken's condition too often.

Soon, the alien is caught and tied up in thick yellow bunting. "Are they going to destroy him – just for being from another planet?" you ask Drakken.

Drakken shakes his head. "Watch."

You do, aghast, as the smart girl leans over, hooks her finger under the alien's chin, and strips him of his face. There are only a few species whose faces are removable, and the Kanatar have never been among them.

Underneath is a face far more humanoid, grayed and faded in the way older humans become, a short strip of hair under his nose bristling like puffer-fish spines. "It was Jedediah Mason, the old miner, all along!" the girl who isn't as smart exclaims. "He must have put on this alien mask and scared everyone away from the mine so that he could have all the gold to himself!"

"It was a _human_?" you say. "Dressed up?"

Drakken nods.

"That makes _so_ much more sense!" you cry. "The Kanatar – their sister planet, Skedis, is almost completely uninhabited, and it's _packed_ with gold." A snort erupts from your nose. "There's no _way_ one would come all the way to Earth for one dinky little mine of it!"

You are surprised by the strength of Dr. Drakken's laughter. Crisped by whatever aches in his throat, it nevertheless blares out like the horn of a boat and sets his entire body atilt. It is a relief to hear.

That's why you agree to watch more episodes with him. They all seem to be relatively the same storyline, only set in different locales and with slight variations in the monster highlighted. Many of the legends could easily stem from ancient sightings of Corruptions. Your fingernails delve into the couch's folds at the thought.

The monster chases the humans and their dog and misses capturing them by no more than a fingerbreadth – Drakken calls it a _hair_ away, which makes sense when you consider the one small whisker that Steven was so eager to show you. The tallest human consumes food at a rate that bests even Drakken. The smart girl loses her glasses. The dog is lured out of hiding by some sort of artificial bone. The monster is tied up and unmasked and revealed to be nothing more frightening than a wayward human.

None of it is anywhere near as entertaining as watching Drakken enjoy it.

And then comes the moment where he doesn't seem to enjoy it anymore. He presses a button on his _remote_ , and he gets to his feet as the screen stills. Every shade of gray and blue that can exist explodes on his face and then drains away altogether. Drakken lurches into the kitchen and hunches over the sink, and you can see his chest hauling back and forth.

"Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no," Drakken says in a murmur that is still louder than your regular volume. He raises it to call, "Okay – Lapis – don't freak out – but –"

The sentence finishes not with words, but with a gurgling noise. A semisolid chunk of debris falls from Drakken's mouth and smacks into the sink. It smells, somehow, both stale and pungent, like old fish bones.

You take a step backward and examine his face. "Is that supposed to happen?"

There is no panic to your question, as there is no sign that he has been harmed in any way. Yet human beings are fragile, Dr. Drakken perhaps more so than most, and the beginnings of tears wet his eyelashes.

"Yes and no. It's a….glitch, but a fairly common one," Drakken says, and there is a weakness to his speech, too, a thin place he cannot protect. "Relatively harmless."

"Then why are you crying?" you say.

"Wha – oh." Drakken dabs the back of his wrist across his eyes as though doing it from a great distance. "Mostly, that's just a reflex. The action makes your eyes automatically water. That and – and it's scary."

Of course, he is frightened. It is easy to see now: the vibration around his mouth; the film of moisture across his forehead that instinct tells you would be cold to the touch; the painful, bulging swallows against a throat that surely must feel as though it _is_ coated with sand.

You glance at the mess in the sink. "Should we put it back in you?"

"Ohhhhhhhhh n-n-no-no, Lapis, that won't be necessary, thank you!" Drakken flails one hand at you, the back of the wrist now positioned over his lips. "As a matter of fact, could you wash that away?"

"Sure," you say. You lift the faucet, and out comes a thin line of water, which you channel toward the mess until it is gone, down into the pipes where it will somehow be disposed of.

The flickering of Drakken's eyes stabilizes, and a ragged sound comes from him as he drops into a chair. "It takes a lot out of you," he says.

You give the sink, now clean, another glance. "It didn't look like _that_ much."

Drakken's smile reminds you of ash. "No, that's an expression. It means it tires you out."

The saying may be baffling, but it's correct. You worry at the dullness that hazes his face, even at your next question: "What _was_ that?"

"That, Miss Lazuli, was throwing up," Drakken says. "Also known as _vomiting_ , _regurgitation_ , and a whole slew of cruder names."

"Well, why you'd do it?" You put a hand to your collarbone. "Is it one of the valves in your throat? Does it get turned around?"

"Ooh! Good guess, but no. It's the body's emergency evacuation method when things aren't working as they're supposed to. That was food I'd already eaten, which my body just decided it would be better off without because it's sick."

"Oh." You study his shivering, poorly insulated form. You have a rudimentary knowledge of what happens to food after it's eaten, yet you never knew that the process could be canceled.

"Mostly it happens when you've ingested something you shouldn't have, like poison or raw meat." Drakken grimaces. "Or four thousand cupcakes."

You shake your head. "But you haven't eaten any poison," you say, remembering the bottles with the likenesses of human bones that Steven pointed out to you, "or raw meat, and I don't know what cupcakes are, but you didn't eat four thousand of anything."

Drakken nods vacantly. "All very true. I must have caught a bug."

You pull your eyebrows together. "I've seen you catch fireflies before, and that didn't make you sick," you say. It was you, in fact, who were cautious of the tiny insects, knowing deep down in that their intermittent light flashes didn't preface a weapon summoning but unable to rid yourself of the association; Drakken was the one who lured one down and giggled at the brisk little churn of its little legs across his fingertips.

The words float in the air for several moments before Drakken finds and absorbs them. "No, no. Not 'bug' as in 'insect.' I was talking about a virus – which," he explains at your puzzled look, "is a microscopic little….thing – I guess it's alive – that gets inside a human and wreaks all sorts of havoc in there. It mimics the symptoms of poisoning so that your body blames the food. When you say you 'catch' a virus, it means it traveled to you from another human."

You say nothing. You are grounded to the spot by the notion of a contaminated human giving Drakken a casual clap on the back – or perhaps one of those high-fives he so likes – and slipping a _virus_ to him when he is so breakable.

"Does that make any sense?" Drakken says. "Do – do Gems catch things?"

"Yes. But they don't make us" – you pantomime launching a splatter of your own into the sink. "They turn us into raging monsters."

"Oh," Drakken says. His fingernail scrapes at the tabletop. "I don't recommend that. Being a raging monster, I mean. Not fun. Well – I take that back. It _is_ fun while you're doing it, but afterward….ohhhh, afterward you _will_ regret it."

His voice is sloshing over its banks, oblivious to the flooding, and it concerns you. You can't help creeping in a little closer, peering a little more intently, checking for horn fragments or extra tongues or anything else that will indicate the degeneration of his innermost being.

"So – you get sick. Then are you messed up forever?" you say, and your own throat tightens, because his people have such a short time as it is.

"No, no," Drakken says. "The body also has something called an _immune system_ – basically its own personal little army of cells that vanquish things like germs and viruses. A virus this sudden – I felt fine last night – usually only lasts…" He takes another sorrowful swallow. "Twenty-four hours."

Twenty-four hours?

You almost want to scoff. If your time in the mirror had been twenty-four hours, you would have already forgotten it by now. It is nothing to a Gem, and yet you see it looming before Dr. Drakken, unyielding and formidable. Shallow as his sickness is, he is drowning in it, and your being safely ashore does not entitle you to smirk at him from above.

It never has.

You part your lips and look for the easy flow that smoothed Blue Diamond's tone in the times she was placating Yellow Diamond's hasty temper, or on the few occasions she chose to comfort her timid Pearl. "Well…at least it's not any longer," you say.

Perhaps you have succeeded: Drakken's face puckers wearily and then relaxes. Yet, although he is seated, you see his kneecaps warp like metal left too long in the sun. You take a crab's step toward him, half expecting there to be another spurting of corrupted food. Instead, Drakken only moans – a sound lashed from him as though with a whip.

"Are you okay?" you ask.

Drakken's head bobs. "Yes," he says. "I will be." He touches his midsection the way one would make careful contact with an undocumented species. "I'd feel better if I were in the bathroom, though."

You blink at him. "Does the bathroom heal you?"

"No," Drakken says in a fraying whisper. "It's just a more convenient place to be sick."

He struggles to his feet, strange popping noises coming from his joints. His knees wobble again, and you brace one hand on his front, one on his back, so that he does not need to rely on them. Your bare soles barely leave the floor as you guide him out the kitchen door and all the way down the hall toward the bathroom.

"How are you so _strong_?" Drakken says.

His words are sloshing again, and each step he takes is wary, as if he has not lived on this planet for his entire life. Your wings thrash inside you, knowing they can't possibly help but refusing to listen.

"It's a Gem thing," you respond, giving the bathroom door a nudge.

It swings open to a room much smaller than its Global Justice equivalent, without the harvest of stalls marching down the wall. In a disproportional lurch, Drakken skids over to kneel before the white basin. One arm straggles around the seat, limp, a victory flag with no wind to congratulate it. The shudder of his chest syncs with the staccato rhythm you can see at his temples.

You sit beside him, amazed that your legs cross casually rather than retracting to meet your illusive spine. "You said throwing up is _relatively_ harmless," you say. "What's the catch?" You gaze at his human body, a spare weaving of skin and flesh and stringy muscle over bones that snap, over priceless organs. "Can you throw up something you really need? Like your heart, or –"

Drakken doesn't allow you to finish; he shakes his head, setting the bramble of hair into a riot. "No, no. Throwing up is a malfunction of the _digestive_ system. Heart's in the _circulatory_ system – which _is_ connected, but not directly. You can only throw up what's in your stomach." Another grimace. "Sometimes your small intestine, if you're really unlucky."

"Oh. That almost sounds like too many systems to keep track of," you say. Did the Diamonds know about all of them, you wonder, when they decried the shoddy makeup of Earth's life?

"The brain does it automatically," Drakken says.

You plan to say "Oh" again, and yet it shifts on your tongue and turns into "Wow" instead. This is all right to share with Dr. Drakken, though – he will not snuff it beneath his foot the way Jasper did; will not hold it between two fingers, unsure what to do with it, the way the Crystal Gems still do.

"The only real danger with throwing up," Drakken says, "is if you can't manage to keep water down."

Your gem stirs at the mention of water. You glance down at the floor, puzzled as to how a virus can offset Earth's gravity.

Drakken wheezes – it would be a deep-throated chuckle at any other time. "Down in your belly," he clarifies. "Otherwise, you can get dehydrated."

You nod in understanding and continue to examine your toes. There is one more facet of the relationship between his people and your Purpose.

That is when another noise, not a wheeze but a choking gasp, bursts from Dr. Drakken. His eyes swell until they nearly fuse into a single Sapphire eye. His boots knock against the floor tiles as he curves over the basin, and his head pops up and down, leaving you staring at the back of a mass of dark quills as his system malfunctions again.

Drakken somehow pries one hand, white down to the stubs of his fingernails, from the basin and yanks the lever on the side of the toilet. It is much shorter and stouter than the one protruding from Global Justice's basin and thankfully seems to require much less effort to move. He gives a strenuous gasp and straightens up again, and you wish to flush the red suffering lines from his eyes.

The dark crevices yawning beneath them are moist again, and you pluck a square of white tissue from its silver hook and dab at them. He quavers against you. "Oh, Lapis," Drakken groans. "How am I going to make it through the next twenty-four – well, twenty-three, I guess now – hours?"

You hate the shrug you are forced to give him, and you volunteer an explanation: "I've never been sick to my stomach before. What does it feel like?"

Drakken squints, shaping two red-streaked lines the width of paper. "It feels like…it feels like…like the ocean. During a storm. When the waves are roiling and bashing into each other, and there's no shore in sight."

Pain flares dully around your gem. "I wish it were the ocean," you say, your voice soft and intense even for you. "Then I could calm it down."

Some of the fear appears to leave Drakken. He goes slack, as though he has shapeshifted all his bones away, and starts to collapse against the basin. You put your arm across his chest, so different from your own quiet, vacant innards, so he doesn't fall.

He sags into you instead, and his weight is trifling, even less than you would have expected. To support him is no exertion at all. You scoot nearer to him.

"Just imagine," you breathe into his sizable ear. "Imagine yourself as a being thousands of years old. You've watched galaxies be born and die. Twenty-three hours is nothing to you. And in the meantime…you've got someone to look after you."

Drakken sniffles, the air caving his body as it travels deep inside him. His head lists onto your shoulder and settles there, his breath a warm patch on your neck. It's the closest you've been to anyone since Malachite's separation.

And while it's not frightening, you'd feel better if the two of you were talking. "So…what are cupcakes, anyway?" you say.

A "heh" burbles from Drakken and onto you. He squirms, as if you have accused him of treason and he is eager to recant.

"Cupcakes," he says, "are a small variety of dessert, which…" His tongue sneaks out, his taste buds pebbled like a starfish's skin. "…don't ask me to elaborate on that right now. And – funny story about them. Well – not funny ha-ha. At least, not for me.

"Once, back when I was a supervillain, I'd stolen a weather disruptor. In order to conceal this machine until its ideal time of use, I was forced to open a chain of cupcake stores – just a whole bunch of them – nothing was in chains – I don't know exactly why they call it that. At any rate, running the stores quickly became more fun than villainy had _ever_ been. I got to design my own flavors, and we were making some money –"

You don't want to interrupt, not as his eyes touch the past with such affection, but you need to know: "What's _money_?"

"Money can be exchanged for goods and services." Drakken's answer sounds automated, as though fed to him on a Peridot's screen.

"Oh," you say. "That paper stuff you use when you want ice cream?" It is still such a strange concept to you, stranger even than the idea of a digestive system that can reverse directions, so different from on Homeworld, where everyone was granted what they had been Designated to deserve.

"Yes, precisely! It can get a little more complicated than that, but…" Drakken shakes his head. "We don't need to go there right now.

"Anyhow, we did well for quite a while, and then we went _out_ of business. That's what it's called when you're not making enough money to stay open. My former business partner" – Drakken seems to line up the buoy-words, tie them into place – "cut and run, leaving me behind with eight thousand surplus cupcakes I had no idea what to do with."

Drakken glances at you, his black eyelids heavy and secretive, as if this information is only shared with his closest confidants. "Now – you see, my mother and I didn't have a lot of that 'money' stuff when I was growing up. My dad was gone, and her job didn't pay as much as his would have. We weren't starving to death or anything, but I was raised not to throw food away, either!"

You nod him on.

"So, I decided to eat the cupcakes," Drakken says. "All at once. I got about halfway through before Shego stopped me. So about four thousand."

You gawk at him. "I didn't know humans could do that."

"We can't," Drakken replies in a peppy voice. "I was sick all night. Actually, to be honest, I didn't feel quite back to normal for quite a few days. Actually, to be honest, I haven't eaten another cupcake since."

You giggle because it is such a sweet, sad mistake for him to have made, and because the sheepish look on his face matches it.

Drakken's laugh gusts around a corner too hard; he sounds sloppy again. "Shego thought it was hilarious. She took pictures. Here, look."

He produces his phone from his pocket, flips it open, and tabs through the screen options before turning it around. You are left gazing at a photo of Dr. Drakken dressed in red clothes in which you have not seen him before, roomy except for where they clench around the bulbous wound on his belly.

A thin gasp slips out of you at the sight. "What _happened_?" you say. "Did you get stabbed or something? You're all swollen!"

"No. That's all just an excess of cupcakes in there." Drakken's fine-boned finger, which surely cannot be much larger than yours, swirls circles on the basin. His mouth has been cast like a fishing net all the way down the considerable length of his chin. It is as though he has just broken free from an unworkable fusion and is now battered with shame.

You know the feeling.

"Oh." You glance back down at the mound that starts directly below his chest and extends all the way down beneath his waist, tight and livid against the waistband of his red pants. "That looks like it _hurts_."

Drakken's hands leave the basin and clap against his cheeks as he begins to shake. You don't know if he laughs or cries; he appears unsure, as well. "Oh, thank you, Lapis," he says, wiping his eyes. "You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that. It was a story that _upset –_ " his voice snaps as his fingers twiddle – "some of my fellow villains when it got out."

You know every word in that sentence, and it isn't helping your understanding one bit. "Why?" you say.

"Well, you know. Because of the –" Drakken puffs his arms out from his concave midriff to illustrate the swelled ramifications of his error.

He receives no "oh" in return this time. While he has communicated effectively, there are still depths you have yet to fathom. You return your gaze to the picture. It isn't such a shocking change, considering your people have been known to transform into everything from birds to candy bars; you can recognize him by the soft blue of his skin and the silly curl of his nose.

"The former business partner? He described it as being 'exactly the type of slovenly behavior that makes me glad we parted ways when we did,'" Drakken says.

"What would that sound like if a normal person said it?"

Drakken's skin twinges. "That it's, you know….gross."

You take him in, breathing rankly against your shoulder, deep valleys forming under his eyes, new gratitude juxtaposing with old bitterness just below the surface. "So it's gross. So what?" you say.

The gratitude wins. Drakken does not flash this smile so much as crank it up – a reedy one that is nevertheless still unmistakably his.

Before you have the chance to return it, his body slants in half in front of the basin again. More food is rejected with a husky sob.

His anguish lodges in your back. Now, though, you know what he is up against and what he does and does not have to fear. Your resolve once again engulfs your identity, only you are not a being of glass this time. You are instead made of cloth: you wrap, you shelter, you soothe.

At Drakken's direction, you retrieve a white towel and dab the gems of sweat from his forehead. You pull the basin's handle and hold his hand until faultless new water swirls in. You tuck his tied-back hair down into his collar so it cannot be dirtied.

These are duties you have never performed in your life, not even as a member of Blue Diamond's entourage. Certainly she would say there is no glory in it, either. And yet, in an offbeat sense the Diamonds wouldn't recognize, you feel honored to do it.

At one point, you catch sight of the clock on the opposite wall. The number on the left has changed, become one unit greater, and you think you know what that means by now.

"Twenty-two hours left," you whisper to Drakken, and he finds the framework of another grin. Although you don't see it, you can feel his facial muscles as they tick upward.

It doesn't seem that you stay this way a long time, even by Earth standards, and soon Drakken begins to shift his legs; they crunch like twigs caught underfoot. "Uwwwgggh," he groans. "My _back_."

You regard the stoop in his spine. "Your back doesn't have a virus too, does it?"

The smile Drakken supplies is as feeble as his fingers. "No. Old injury. You remember the time I danced with a robot?"

You nod. Drakken's stories tend to be not easily forgotten.

"Well, let's just say it wasn't _nearly_ as fun as dancing with you." His voice fades into static again.

"You sound funny," you tell him.

"Do I?" Drakken says limply. His head tips forward, grazing against your arm, and there is the feel of fire being kindled under his skin.

The fact that human beings produce body heat is still startling for you, but you are growing accustomed to it – and you suspect that is not what you are facing here. This is more akin to what emits from a Ruby before her footsteps scorch the floor.

"You feel funny, too," you say. "You're all hot."

"Oh. Swell," Drakken says. "I've probably got a fever on top of everything." At your puckered face, he adds, "It's an elevated temperature."

You frown, still perplexed. "But I thought humans' body temperatures were constant," you say. Steven has told you that the lizards that roam Beach City, the ones his lion likes to eat, depend on their environment to determine their temperature, but you were Taught that humans had a superior regulation system – though not one advanced enough to render temperature irrelevant altogether.

Drakken heaves a stagnant sigh, hot as his skin. "Normally they are. When…"

"…things are working the way they're supposed to," you finish for him.

He grunts with appreciation and presses both hands into the space where his back dips, provoking another twig-snapping noise. "Urgh. Can you help me to the sink? Please?"

You don't speak or even nod. You simply stand up and pull him gently to his feet. Drakken turns on the faucet and fills the cup resting beside it with water and from there shuffles back out to the couch, with some additional help from you. He produces a vine, which flicks across the room and hauls back a brown, bland version of Blue Diamond's footrest. Only once he's laid down on his back with a volley of twig sounds does he make a frustrated wave at the air.

"Snap," Drakken says. "I forgot to get a bowl. Lapis, will you bring me a bowl just in case?"

"In case you want to eat cereal?" you say. It seems a ridiculous possibility.

An ugly shudder appears to wrack Drakken from the inside out. "No. Absolutely not. And not one that small, either. There are larger bowls in the cabinet right below the sink – in case I have to throw up again."

Hesitant to leave him, you nevertheless steal into the kitchen and crouch to open the panel beneath the sink. A stack of bowls rests inside – you recognize their concave shapes, though these are, as Drakken said, of larger, sturdier dimensions. You select one and bring it back, setting it on the footstool beside the water glass.

It is a good thing you did. No sooner has Drakken lifted his glass and taken a sip of water than whatever holds his stomach under siege repels it. You shove the bowl forward just in time.

Afterward, Drakken's eyelashes bow toward his cheeks and then twitch rapidly.

"It's okay." You pattern your words after the white Pearl's: light, crease-free, with a lilt of reassurance that all will be well. "Twenty-one-and-a-half hours left." You pick the bowl back up. "Um, what should I do with this? Throw it away?"

"No-ooo," Drakken whines. "Just…just take it to the sink and rinse out – rinse the – and then you can – bring it baaccckk…" His voice once more trails off like a dropped transmission.

You flit back to the kitchen sink, cleanse the bowl, pat it dry with a mildly abrasive paper-piece, and then return it to its spot on the footrest. Drakken's watering eyes thank you.

"Sorry about that," he says. "I – we – humans tend to get a little crabby when they're sick."

You study his arms. While they doesn't seem as smooth as they usually do, each individual hair lifted in a tiny mound, there is no sign of a shell or pinchers. "Like a crab? How?"

"Grumpy," Drakken grouses into his palms. "It just means we get grumpy."

"Oh."

The virus shows no signs of relenting in the hours to come. Drakken takes tentative sips of water at irregular intervals, and every one of them is expelled within moments. Each one appears to frighten him more than the last. His grip on the bowl becomes less and less steady, and you lose track of the number of times you trek to the kitchen and back to empty it.

Drakken finally wraps quivering arms around his stomach. "This is bad," he says. "This is really bad. If I can't start keeping water down – and fast – I'm going to need to go to the hospital. And that wasn't supposed to be a stop on the hometown tour!"

He inhales, and in it you hear a sharp, desperate attempt to calm himself. Your wings feel cold inside your gem at the sound. You have never been to a hospital or even to the infirm tents your people used during the war, and you can only begin to imagine the horrors of broken humans: with enlarged eyeballs that rattle around in their sockets, with grotesque horns poking through tender skin, with limbs askew like Greg's leg…

And yet it is also the place where mothers undergo pain and mess and inconvenience to spawn the next generation, all without forfeiting their own existence. You line your mind with this reflection lest you wind up having to escort Drakken there after all.

"I mean," Drakken says, still speaking as if he has a mouthful of seaweed, "if you were curious, I could take you there to look around – but this would not be the way to do it!"

"Gotcha. Skipping the hospital if we can." You wink. "It doesn't sound like my type of place, anyway."

Water drips from the rim of the newly washed bowl. You whisk the drops away before they can darken the footrest, and then you freeze with your hand still suspended in midair.

Dr. Drakken needs to keep water down.

 _Water._

It was one of the first words you ever heard as you stood on legs that still wobbled beside other newly-emergent Lapises and Aquamarines. The link was immediate, greater than the one with your own manifested body. You lifted your arms and felt the water offer itself to you, its entire cycle at your disposal, delicate and destructive and utterly alive.

You glance back down at Dr. Drakken, mewling as he attempts to fold the pain inside him. A current of surety zips through your back.

"I have an idea," you say. You lift his shirt, sodden with sweat, and roll it back over itself.

"Lapis!" Drakken yelps.

"Trust me," you tell him, disallowing your mission stance to falter. You do, however, feel obligated to tell him, "Though I don't think I've ever done this before."

The sound that comes from Drakken reminds you of a hot vent streaming into the cold waters of an oceanic trench. It lingers on the cusp of distrust, fueled by a sickness with which you cannot empathize.

Your gaze wanders back to his exposed middle. There, just above the waist-clasp of his pants, is a perfectly circular indentation, just large enough to accommodate three or four peas. It has been notched in with machine-like precision, though its tender pucker speaks of organic mending.

You gasp. "Is that from the cupcakes?"

"Wha huh?" Drakken lifts his torso, the posture seeming too dependent on his elbows. The shirt stays hooked in its own soak. "Oh. That. No. That's my belly button."

"A button?" you say. "What happens if I push it?"

"At this point, I'll probably throw up again, so please don't!" Drakken's buoy-words hasten out. "It's not a real button; just looks like one. The technical term for it is a _navel_ …and do Gems really not have them?"

He squints at you. "Oh. I guess you don't. That's probably how you make that whole crop-top thing look classy." His hands make a vaguely complimentary gesture. "All humans have them."

You shake your head. "Steven doesn't. That's where his gem is."

"Ah." The clouds in Drakken's eyes part for a moment. "Well – when a human baby grows inside their mother, they receive nutrients through a cord –"

"The umbilical cord. And then it gets chopped off after they're born. I know," you say. His cheeks are already sizzling pink; though it may be a result of the elevated temperature, you don't wish for him to exert any more of his waning strength. "Your mother told me all about that part."

"Yes. But there's more! After the cord is cut, a little stump is left behind on the baby's stomach. Eventually, after a week or so, the stump hardens and falls off. What's left behind is the belly button," Drakken says in his knowledgeable manner.

"Oh."

This puckered little marking is the remainder of what once linked him to his mother. She carried him and nurtured him inside without having the life leeched from her. The fact that such fragile humans by nature accomplish something the greatest Gem minds have long since stopped trying to solve makes you feel even more that you are adrift between two galaxies – far away from everything you've been Taught, wondering how much of it was ever real.

You will your attention back to the friend and boyfriend who needs your aid. "Take a drink of water," you tell him.

A weak pout claims Drakken's face. "Lappppp-issss."

"Trust me," you repeat, this time without any disclaimers.

Drakken raises his glass to his lips and takes a delicate swallow of water. You wait a moment for it to hobble down his throat and sink into his stomach, and then you place your hands on either side of his belly button and close your eyes.

Your powers wait inside you, fervent to be used for something other than harm. Into them you channel thoughts of the calmest seas you can remember: translucent unbroken sheets of water, waves lapping over the rocks like an embrace, kelp's greenness gilded through by sunlight. Your gem grows warm, and you feel the droplets inside him yield to your authority.

Evidently Dr. Drakken feels it too, for his rigid mouth relaxes, and he lets his head drop heavily onto the sofa cushion. He exhales in relief. In a voice that seems unaware that it even speaks, he says, "Lapis, you are _sublimely_ brilliant."

You do this several more times over the next few rotations of the clock. Each time, it is successful. You cannot coerce the other contents of his stomach, which you can only guess at, into behaving, but you are able to ground the water in his belly and prevent him from having to visit the infirmary.

After he's sipped his way through a whole glass, Drakken plucks at the skin above his knuckles. It bounces cleanly back into place, which prompts Drakken to smile and proclaim it a good sign.

Now he lies beneath a ratty blanket, which has aged in mere years as things tend to do on Earth, and he shivers despite the warm muggy weather and the circles of excess heat on his cheeks. One arm flops, immobile, onto the blanket, and you take the other hand in between yours and give it a squeeze. The lines in his palms have turned into sweaty riverbanks that nearly seal your hand to his.

"It's going to be okay," you say. You glance at his wrist-timepiece, only to find that it scatters the numbers around its perimeter and points small sharp sticks at them rather than lining them up to be read.

Drakken takes your cue. "Nineteen more hours to go," he translates.

The buoys bob only faintly as he talks, and it unsettles you. "Do you want to watch some more of that silly mystery show?" you ask.

"No." Drakken's eyelids are swooping in for a landing. "I think I might as well try to get some sleep."

Your shoulders tighten at the thought of him declining into unconsciousness. You try not to let it show. "Is sleep the cure?" you say.

"It helps, yes." Drakken grunts and wriggles himself more firmly beneath the blanket. "Passes the time if nothing else. Although goodness knows the times when you most need and want to fall asleep tend to be the times when it's hardest to do so." His shrug is accepting yet hollow.

"Would it help if I sang you a lullaby?" you say.

Something wells up in the reddened slots Drakken's eyes have become, as though he is observing a ritual as sacred as the old Emergence Ceremony. You can't take the credit for it. Your kindness is not your own; what Drakken sees is the reflection of all he has given.

"Do you _know_ any lullabies?" he asks.

"Well, I guess it's not _technically_ a lullaby." You pronounce _technically_ the way he always does – sweeping widely to broaden the meaning. "But it's a Gem song…and hearing it always made me feel better."

Drakken nods distantly. There is no keenness left in his eyes; they have clouded over to match the slatelike color of his skin.

You take a clean breath to unlock the words and begin:

" _Welcome to your life, dear friend_

 _Welcome to your home_

 _Your future's bright; stumble you might_

 _But you'll never be alone"_

Millennia have passed since you exposed this song to air. It is like the ocean: liquid and soft, yet with the power of an entire battalion behind it. Even though you gaze at the hair sopping wearily onto Drakken's forehead, you are seeing the planet for which you were concocted, with its former lush pastels and the eager welcomes you received from smiles and whispers. As new legs lurched under you, you knew innately that you were Lapis Lazuli, and that you were fortunate to be a proper, well-molded Gem – an Elite at that – immune to and uncomprehending of the suffering of those beneath you.

 _"The stars will keep you safe, dear friend_

 _Their light's far more than warmth_

 _Let them guide your way; watch them dance and play_

 _Constantly being reborn_

 _We are one, born from the ground_

 _Eternal unity_

 _Our reach extends, horizon without end_

 _Far beyond our galaxy"_

"That's real pretty," Drakken murmurs. He sounds a thousand light-years away.

 _"So do not fear, my newly made_

 _There is no need to cry_

 _We must move ahead, but wherever we tread_

 _You'll not be left behind"_

You shiver at the irony and continue.

" _Drink the stardust now, dear friend_

 _Wrap our sun around your skin_

 _There's a whole new sky inside your eyes_

 _You have so much to give_

 _Welcome to your life, dear friend_

 _Welcome to your home_

 _Your future's bright; stumble you might_

 _But you'll never be alone"_

You can barely hear your own voice by the time you are done. It has thinned to a trickle, slinking down to take refuge in the earth. A bevy of resentments toward the Crystal Gems volleys between your shoulder blades, not for the present or the future but the past; the memories of that happy time are now malformed reflections that don't tell the whole story.

And yet none of that matters right now, for you are fairly sure Dr. Drakken is asleep. His black eyelids have fused with the underlining bags so that two spots of dark matter rest above his nose, which whistles and rustles in a way that reminds you of the wind snapping through the multihued leaves in that first moment when it seemed possible that you could call this planet home. The motion of his chest has calmed to a peaceful tide. His lips turn up at the edges, as though he dreams of lovely things within his own star system.

Runoff from tears stands on Drakken's cheeks in hard brackish patches. He looks even softer in his sleep and his illness, soft and vulnerable. You look at him and you wonder whether you could brush back the jagged line of hair without disturbing him. Can harm come to humans if this cycle isn't completed? Neither Steven nor Drakken himself seemed to suffer any back at the barn when their recharging was interrupted, but Steven is half-Gem and Drakken didn't have a _bug_ caught in his systems back then.

You withdraw your hand and drop instead into a cross-legged sit beside the couch, still observing the hapless human form that looks stronger than yours yet, in reality, is infinitely more delicate. Swamped in his sogginess and odor, he is nevertheless a marvel. He will weather this with the resilience of humans, and you will see to it that he does it here rather than in the impersonal, chaotic angst of a hospital tent.

The front number on the kitchen clock has changed three times and is perhaps midway to a fourth when you hear Dr. Drakken twitching his way back from slumber. He appears replenished if not fully recovered, his scar not in such harsh relief against his skin.

You sprout your wings and fly over to him. "Welcome back. How are you feeling?" you say.

Drakken's muttered reply is nothing but spiraling, murky water. You give him some more time to smack his tongue and stretch and blink before you repeat the question.

"I suppose…I suppose I've been worse," Drakken says. A yellow petal blossoms behind one of his ears. Though he scowls and yanks it free, you take it as a healthy sign.

"But you've also been better?" you guess.

Rather than answering, Drakken makes a small blipping noise, the kind a ship's interface gives to warn of a minor technical problem, and places a hand to his stomach. You can see the rigor that remains around his eyes.

"Can I get you anything?" you say.

Drakken nestles back into the maroon fabric and seems to ponder this. "Well, actually, I could use a washcloth. And maybe some ginger ale?"

Your eyebrows pucker.

"A washcloth is one of those small towels underneath the bathroom sink," Drakken says. "And ginger ale comes in cans in the refrigerator."

"Okay." You remember hearing that word, _refrigerator_ , used to describe one of the food-closets in the kitchen. Since it sounds somewhat like _frigid_ , you'd wager that it is the cold one. "Coming right up," you say – another phrase Steven taught you.

You find a washcloth under the bathroom sink, just as Drakken said, and rummage through cans in the refrigerator's cold until you locate one that reads _ginger ale_ on the side. Its lid turns out to be one of those odd ones where the small metal pull must be hooked open and then yanked away like a hank of expended planetary crust. Left behind is an impractically small hole.

"Ahhh…thank you," Drakken says as soon as you return to his side with the washcloth in one hand and the ginger ale in the other.

"You're welcome." You tip the can of ginger ale forward so that pale brown fluid froths onto the white washcloth, lift Drakken's shirt, and begin to work the dampened cloth across his stomach.

"Um. Lapis?"

You look up to see Dr. Drakken's face wiggling with either laughter or the beginnings of a substantial groan. "Yes?" you say.

"I probably should have explained this better," he says, scratching at his forehead.

You spend quite awhile after that learning that taking care of humans is not always as straightforward as you thought.

Drakken is expounding on human belly buttons, most of which tuck in like his but a few of which poke outward, when his phone begins to vibrate in his pocket. He jolts and pales with the motion, and you grab the phone to relieve him of it. The spindly letters on the screen read SHEGO.

You flip open the phone as you have seen Drakken do so many times and press it to the earless side of your head. "Hello, this is Lapis Lazuli," you say politely.

"Hey there, Space Queen." There is a mischievous grin in Shego's voice. "Is the Doc there?"

You glance back at Dr. Drakken, who struggles blearily to find a focus point in the meager slant of light filtering through his glass-paned windows. "Yeah, but I don't know how alert he is," you say. "He just woke up. He's sick, and he's been reversing his food all day."

"Oh. Dang. Well, that explains why I haven't heard from him," Shego says. "Normally he calls me around this time to tell me _all_ the little details of his day, so I wanted to make sure he hadn't suctioned himself to the ceiling again or something."

She wields her snicker with expertise, as though nothing could possibly lurk beneath its creaseless surface.

"No," you say, "he just accidentally grabbed a bug for twenty-four hours. It should be done soon. I've been with him since morning."

"You're a trooper, then." The grin expands around her words. "He's such a _baby_ when he's sick."

You sneak another look at Drakken; he has worked his left shoulder into a type of sagging stand, and the remainder of his body falls against it as if broken. He _does_ appear to have de-aged some, his nose weeping something slippery, his rickety collection of bones a Kindergarten mere days from emerging – but not _that_ much. Nor are you a member of anyone's troop, so you reason that Shego must mean something different.

"Well, he's been a little _crabby_ ," you say, exploring the brisk new contours of the fresh term. "But it's okay. I've been around people _way_ more unpleasant than him."

You have not said _way_ before in that manner, not in the guise of an adjective as Kim Possible uses it. You like the way it feels leaving your tongue.

"Unlucky you," Shego grunts.

You roll your eyes. "Tell me about it."

Dr. Drakken folds over closer to you, his presence even warmer and more blatant than usual. He structures the question "Who is it?" and you catch it more by sight than by sound.

"Shego," you mouth in return.

Instantly, the fatigue on Drakken's face is overthrown by delight. His active little fingers reach forward and seem to shoo away the distance between himself and the phone. "Can I talk to her?" he asks hoarsely.

"Sure." You pass the phone, and Drakken knows what to do with it from there. It is maneuvered into the bony dip beside his neck with more coordination than you would have expected of him.

This is followed by a stream of cheerful babble. The buoy-words rasp, rattle, and grumble as they bob, and yet the cheer remains somehow undefeated.

You lean your head against the base of the sofa and peek at the kitchen clock once again. Its two rear numbers read _59_ – the last number, you have noticed, that they will display before they roll over to zeroes and the front digit cedes to one greater.

He has made it through ten. Only fourteen more hours to go.

Through the side of the phone, you hear Shego ask, "You sure you don't want me to call your mom?"

"Positive." Drakken's reply is bright and affable, the beep of a door granting admittance. "I'd rather have Lapis right now. She's not fussy."

The carpet grows peaceful beneath your toes, and your superficial backbone straightens to raise your head higher. In that instant, you do not feel extra limbs dragging like anchors, the ballast of enormous shaggy hair fastened to your scalp. Your being thrives until there is no room left for Jasper.

On this strange, irregular planet, an instant lasts long enough to matter.


	17. Midnight

**~Thanks to everyone who's read, reviewed, and been patient with my slow-pokey self. My life has gotten a lot busier over the summer, and I might not be posting as frequently, but I'm not giving up on my fanfics. Hope you all are still enjoying.**

 **And now, without further adieu. . . some Lapis-Mama Lipsky interaction.~**

You still have not told Dr. Drakken what it means to be a Lapis on Homeworld.

Yet there are times when you think he already knows. There is something to the tilt of his head when he speaks to you, to the utter tenderness of his touch, to every tiny, maladroit courtesy he shows you. You have to remind yourself that you live on Earth now, and your auspicious purpose back on Homeworld would actually be exactly the type of thing that is frowned upon down here.

There is also none of the ingratiating or flattery that so often permeated interactions with the Elite. Even if you were not in exile, you're not sure you could return to the husks of those behaviors. It is a thought both saddening and liberating.

Twenty-seven hours after his first throw-up, Dr. Drakken has made a full recovery. His skin has gone back to its healthy, sun-warmed blue, and the sour smell has been cleansed by that toothpaste that Pearl loves so much. His lips no longer sport alarming cracks and his eyes, though still outlined in red, have regained their energy.

He is cheerfully insistent on taking you to what he calls a _park_ so you can play on the _equipment_. The word _equipment_ conjures up reflections of Injectors and other humorless machines stationed on the surface of a planet, but that is far from what this _equipment_ turns out to be.

This consists of small huts fashioned from plastic, connected by a series of parallel rods or rings, or by small bridges constructed from rope. Almost every hut ends with a long curved sheet of plastic that leads to the ground. These, Drakken tells you, are called _slides_ , and if you sit at the top of one and give the sides a firm push, gravity will whisk you right to the ground. He also says it is more fun to do if you shapeshift internal organs first. You give that a try on your second slide down and decide, while you have experienced much worse sensations, that you will stick to a hollow interior for now.

The rope bridges are "funner," as Drakken says. They judder from side to side at your weight on them and toss in the manner of a storm-wracked ship when you jump in place. It is just enough power not to be frightening.

Best of all, however, are the _swings_. There are long, rubberized strips held on the left and right sides by clamps, suspended from metallic chains that extend all the way to the top of a structure has neither walls nor floor, just a triangular base that narrows to a single bar across the top.

You nudge a swing with your knee. "So how do these work?" you ask.

Drakken beams. "I'll show you," he says, and he does: He plants his backside on the rubber strip, adjusts it with a comical wiggle, dangles his feet as close to the ground as they will reach, and latches his hands around the chains. There is the gathering of momentum – where he backs up slowly until the chains creak a protest – and the release – where his heels leave the ground and the swing thrusts forward, the feet kicked up until they give the illusion of being level with the sky, then curling back under for the return. "See?"

It seems rather complicated, but Dr. Drakken's body, clumsy though it may be, is moving as though confident in this territory.

You perch on the next swing over from him. Your toes just barely whisper over the sand beneath. Its cool caress douses the fear before it can even remember the burning landscape where you let Jasper in.

On your first attempt, you end up swaying wildly, your legs paddling the air, directionless. Drakken cackles until you flick sand at him with your big toe. For your second attempt, you align your ankles and imagine wire springs in them and end up shooting straighter skyward, only veering sideways on the backswing. On your third attempt, you topple out of the swing entirely and begin laughing as soon as you hit the ground, before Drakken's gasp even registers.

It's good to laugh again; you have missed the vibration from gem to throat.

After several more stumbles and failures and flails, you are almost keeping pace with Drakken, at least in single swings. He has the ability to ride the swing back and forth several times, stacking momentum so that he thrusts higher each turn, and shouts words of encouragement between pumps of his legs.

You mimic his movements with the exactness of a mirror, and it begins to work.

When the swing reaches its apex, you launch yourself from it, spawn your wings, and ride the breeze up toward the nearest cloudbank. You close your eyes, feel the sun on the upturn of your nose, and you can almost pretend you have ventured across both space _and_ time back to your true home. Near-muted whispers of _free_ make up your entire physical form.

They are scattered by another laugh from below. Dr. Drakken holds a hand over his brow like a landing strip and shakes his head as he chuckles up at you. "Believe it or not, I didn't see that coming!" he says.

A tendril of water vapor brushes your arm teasingly, and you grin to match it. "Did you see _this_ coming?" Before Drakken can reply, you have already swooped down, snatched him up by the wrists, and swung in a loop back into the sky.

"Wha?" Drakken's shriek is rough-edged yet sanded by giggles. "Lapis!"

You glance down at him, searching for fear. "Are you okay?" you say.

"Yes." Drakken's head doesn't move, but you see the bump in his throat nod. "For now."

You understand. You navigate turns with more caution than usual, staying low and monitoring your spinning, before you finally put Drakken down as though lowering a palanquin to the ground.

He immediately knocks himself over onto the grass behind him, and his subsequent laughter lures yours to come out and join it.

By the time Drakken delivers you to Mama Lipsky's house for the night, he is panting hard to restock his oxygen reserve, and your smile is wide enough to pain your cheeks. Mama Lipsky takes one look at the two of you on her doorstep, and her eyes grow as shiny as Peridot.

Drakken requests permission to hug you, which you grant, and then the long, gangly arms are around you. You feel their careful avoidance of your gem, their awkwardness as they realize they could circumvent you several more times if they so desired. Your fingers find each other behind his back and hang on, just for a minute, before you have to go and face the night again.

When you do, Dr. Drakken bids you good night and backs haltingly down his mother's steep flight of wooden stairs. His eyes are clasped to yours so that one heel oversteps the stair behind it; he tumbles, end over end, down the remaining stairs before stopping in a net of vines, hurriedly strewn by his subconscious, that suspend him several inches above the walkway square.

You giggle into your hand. Mama Lipsky gasps and runs down the steps to inspect her son's body for damage. Finding none, she gives him a resounding kiss on the cheek and sends him on his way.

The sky is darkening in fat strips, earlier now, which Drakken has assured you is normal for this new season of Earth. The hot air that landed on your skin earlier now has the feel of dividing around it, cooling it.

Mama Lipsky goes back inside and you follow her around the house as she switches off artificial lights, helping along the darkness that will bring her sleep. Her walk is plump and elegant, and the questions she asks you, shrill though they may be, are also rounded off, no sharp edges to stick you.

Mama Lipsky pauses in the kitchen doorway with her hand on the switch. "Do you need anything to eat before I turn in for the night?" Before you can shake your head no, she gives a dolphin's laugh and says, "Oh – silly me. No, I know you don't _need_ anything to eat. But you would _like_ something before I go to bed?"

"No. I'm fine, thanks," you say.

"All right then." Mama Lipsky turns off the kitchen light and gives you a look so full of warmth that you startle. "Good night, dear."

"Good night," you say.

The small space beneath her door displays light for awhile longer, and then it too settles into darkness. It is just you now, alone with the sky – now the forceful shade of purple found at the center of Amethyst gems.

On some nights it is a comfort to watch the stars. On others, their lights are taunting beacons, heralding a shore where you never can return. You are now a maverick living among other mavericks in a place where you can be contented, if not entirely blissful, and yet a tiny part of you corrodes every time you gaze up into the sky and deliberately choose to not look at Homeworld's galaxy.

You turn away from the panorama of stars now and bring your hands behind your neck. You are acutely aware of how empty of Jasper you are, how much angry frightened space she left behind for you to fill.

Rising to your feet, you pace across the shorn carpet, mimicking Dr. Drakken with your fingers linked behind your back and your head down as though you are a shore-bird scouring for crab holes. You read more of the digestion magazine, something about a kind man who builds homes for _orphans_ , which must be like the Off-Colors because they have no place to belong. You attempt one of Amethyst's body-tricks, a "handstand" she called it. Gravity insists on keeping your feet on the floor and your hands in the air, rather than the other way around, and just to spite it you sprout your wings and fly in circles, dodging and weaving around the propeller on the ceiling that you have never seen activated.

You are hovering above the couch when you hear a door open and then shut. Footsteps pad down the hall. Just as it occurs to you that you are thought to be sleeping on the couch, Mama Lipsky appears, holding a glass with a shallow amount of water inside. Her dropped-open mouth tells you it is too late to hide yourself.

"Hi, Mama Lipsky," you try instead.

Mama Lipsky blinks; her eyes nearly vanish without the lenses to announce them, and her hands smack onto her hips. "Lapis Lazuli! What are you doing awake at this hour?"

Her voice is a velvet-sheathed sword. You come to a landing beside her.

"Being a Gem. We don't need to sleep," you say. You turn over to your new composed, fearless voice. "Dr. Drakken – he said it's like we're plugged straight into the universe's energy and humans run on batteries, so you have to recharge every night, but we don't."

"Well, I suppose that makes sense," Mama Lipsky says, although her blinking only speeds up. "But – honey – it's hard for me to imagine that you don't need any rest. If you're _able_ to sleep, I don't see how it could do you any harm."

She has no idea.

You begin to set your face, prepare to recite whatever she needs to hear so she will retreat. Mama Lipsky stops you with a birdlike tilt of her head and a soft "Lapis?"

At that moment, she is Dr. Drakken in a smaller package and a higher octave. It plies at the intangible barrier around your gem and gently squeezes what is exposed.

You permit your eyelashes to lower, just a notch, and you feel your fists come apart. "It could, believe me," you say. "I've slept exactly once in my life, and I never want to do it again."

To your surprise, Mama Lipsky sets her water glass down and comes to sit on the sofa in front of you. "Why? What happened when you slept?"

"Dreams." The word pocks your lips. "I had to watch everything I was ever afraid of come true right there in front of me. And it didn't matter that they weren't real, because they were still stronger than me. They pinned me down and showed it to me – over and over and _over_!" Your speech quakes, barely obedient to you. "And if I go back to sleep, they'll come for me again."

Mama Lipsky lets her arms fall, and you notice she is clad in different garments than when she told you good night: a light-yellow pair of short pants, and a matching top with a bow at the neckline that is front-facing and, it appears, unneeded for support. Like her everyday dress, these are decorated with drawings of flowers. The outer of it is lined in fuzzy fabric that appears to have been brushed and rinsed; it reminds you of the moss on Kindergarten Base 19 that would hold a handprint for all time. You imagine its suppleness between your fingers one last time, and then not even the pitying squeak from Mama Lipsky is an irritant.

"So nightmares are our problem," Mama Lipsky says, confusingly using "our" in a manner that implies the singular. "Well, I know all about those. My poor Drewbie used to have nightmares so bad that he would wet the bed."

You do not know what that means, and for the time being you decide it does not matter. Your projected body tenses nevertheless, for in that moment you have the foreknowledge of a Sapphire; it is apparent to you what is coming next.

You are correct. "What are these bad dreams about, dear?" Mama Lipsky says.

Something rushes in you, something that pains your gem at the thought of stalling her recharge any further. You shake your head. "Never mind. It's not a big deal. I'm fine – you should go back to sleep."

Mama Lipsky's hands find her hips and stick there. "Now, I know you probably think I could never understand because I'm just a human and have lived a puny little life. And I may never have gone to the bottom of the ocean or been stuck in a mirror, but at one point, I had a no-good husband run out on me, and my only son was serving a life sentence, so I know what it is to hurt!" One hand moves to pat the sofa beside her. "You tell Mama Lipsky all about it."

There is an instant where you simply stare at her, stunned by the words that scan you with the accuracy of the finest-tuned detector drone. Even with that cloud of hair she only rises to your shoulder, and yet for now she is a Diamond: she is not to be disobeyed. You hitch yourself up onto the couch beside her and, unable to meet her gaze, you turn around and throw your back at her in a hard wall, though you know it is not fair to this woman who has been nothing but generous to you. You only hope she sees the trust inherent in exposing your gem to her.

How do you even begin to make her understand your life? You're not certain you entirely grasp it yourself – how deep it runs and how far back, at what point your obedience became a flaw. But she asked what it is that makes you afraid to sleep, and that is one stream you can follow back to its source.

You take a breath to see if lungs will crowd out the burdensome hollow in your chest. "When I went back to my planet –"

"Back to Homeworld," Mama Lipsky supplies.

Hearing that name in her velvet-sword voice snares your next sentence in your throat. While you wait for it to pass, you rotate to look at her sideways. " – when I went back, everything was different. My people had big new plans for Earth, and they were super-mad that all the equipment they sent down here kept being destroyed. The Gem they'd Assigned that mission – her name's Peridot –" you have grown accustomed enough to saying that name that it doesn't warp in your mouth"– she tapped into our old tech to figure out what was going on, and that's when she met my friend Steven. He's half-human, and that freaked her out, because she'd never seen a human before, plus he showed her that Homeworld _didn't_ wipe all the Gems on Earth out at the end of the war like they told her they did.

"She sent out a planet-wide request for information on Steven. Well, I guess Peridot's boss – Yellow Diamond – did the math and figured out there'd been a Homeworld Gem recently stranded on Earth."

"You." Mama Lipsky's guess is not a question.

"Me," you confirm. "And Yellow Diamond 'retrieved' me and threw me into an interrogation room for Peridot to have to a chat with me. She brought a giant enforcer with her – Jasper."

Insistent heat rips down your back at _that_ name, and Mama Lipsky does not miss the significance. Her hands take yours, cushioning them.

"Jasper had a whole list of terrible things she'd do to me if I didn't tell them where Steven and the rebel Earth-Gems were." Your voice turns arch to preserve itself.

 _Pinned on either side by hands larger than your head, frozen in the face of those rasping threats, while the Gem with whom you now share a barn scrolled emotionlessly through the screen formed by her detached fingers…_

Mama Lipsky does not supply a guess that time. Her eyes seem to be lined with the same substance that graces her night clothes.

"So I spilled. They loaded me aboard a spaceship and took me to Earth with them. They called me their 'informant.'" You shudder. "I hated that – it made me feel so dirty. I shouldn't have told. I should have stood up to them!"

"That's no easy task when your life is on the line," Mama Lipsky says.

"When we docked in Beach City, Steven and the rebel Gems were waiting for us, even though I'd contacted Steven and I'd _told_ him to run away. I'd _told_ him – but of course he never would have. He's way too loyal."

 _Standing there, immersed in the greenish light cast by the spaceship's open hatch, even smaller and even more vulnerable than you remembered him. He gives you a look of concern, as though your discomfort upsets him more than the threat of his own demise._

"Jasper and Peridot threw Steven and the rebel Gems – and me – into cells on the spaceship. They were going to take us back to Homeworld to stand trial, I guess. But Steven managed to escape…"

 _His figure growing still smaller and stubbier as he disappeared down the corridor's menacing gleam. "I'll come back for you."_

"…and one of the rebel Gems damaged the spaceship so it crashed back down onto the beach. Jasper came out of the wreckage, and I could see she wasn't interested in letting anyone stand trial anymore."

 _Jasper's feral fingers pressing into your cheeks as though she wishes to brand you. The solution lurks at the bottom of her demands like a flat shark on the ocean floor, ready to devour you both._

 _Let it._

"I knew I couldn't let her hurt Steven…"

No, you will not bring fusion into the conversation. You will be here until dawn, if not longer, attempting to explain that: the blinding togetherness, the lurid contrast, Jasper's essence daubed onto yours, and then the coarse sobs. Malachite cried the tears you and Jasper were both too stubborn to shed.

You rest your chin on the filmy strip of skirt that drapes your knees. "So I grabbed Jasper," you say, speaking carefully around the gaps in your rendition, "dragged her to the bottom of the ocean, and used my water powers to chain her up and hold her there."

"For six months?" Mama Lipsky's eyebrows climb.

You nod. "Yeah. I'm tougher than I look." You sense Mama Lipsky's human heat and her odor, the thin, itching scent of overripe flowers, moving in closer.

"But eventually I was overpowered," you say. Mama Lipsky's shoulder releases a faint shudder so near yours. "Jasper took control. She tried to hurt people, and I was too weak to stop her." You remember it now, the vacuous quivering in your limbs where your power once swam. "By the time Steven and his friends saved me, I wasn't even conscious anymore. That's when I had the dreams."

Mama Lipsky stops with her hand extended in midair. The flesh on her upper arms fits loosely, in the same way Dr. Drakken's pants do, and it wiggles slightly now. As shrill as she is, there is something noble to her bearing, unlike her son's poorly coordinated, charming manner.

There is another thought left inside you, a thought broken and separated, like the bones of Greg's leg. It must be released, for you have no healing powers of your own.

"I spent so much time down at the bottom of the ocean," you say, "holding Jasper in place with all my might. The only light was what the fish used to attract their prey. The water was colder and heavier than I ever knew water could be. The ocean was my one safe place on this crummy little planet – and now it's ruined for me."

You are stronger this time; only one tear falls, and this you are able to catch on the back of your hand and flick away with a dash of your wrist. Your head is also heavier than it should be, and you let it tip forward to meet your legs.

Mama Lipsky begins to stroke your hair, sifting ragged strands away from the brow they hide. "There, there," she says. "It'll be all right, Baby Girl."

There is nothing piercing about her voice anymore. All you can think in the moment is that you have never been anyone's baby girl before, not even Blue Diamond's. _Her_ touch, though never cruel toward you, had the untamed force of one of the Gem ships that could strip the ground for meters simply by landing. Mama Lipsky's touch is a cloud descending, skimming the ground in whispers of vapor.

It is not the sort of thing you should luxuriate in, yet you cannot lift your head. You _do_ manage to sniffle, "I – I'm thousands of years older than you," with only half the strength that lives inside of you.

"Shhhh," Mama Lipsky says. "Not right now."

Once again, she rewrites all the laws of the universe with a brief statement. Your wings are a turbulent sea inside your gem, and you don't dare to challenge her.

Mama Lipsky continues to pick at your hair as though searching for bugs. Steven had told you that some animal mothers do that with their babies. "My stars, you _have_ been through a lot," she says, and she must truly mean it if she is evoking the stars. When you have no answer for her, she continues:

"One thing I've learned over the years is that the more times you focus on a memory, the more powerful it grows. And the more times you deliberately push it away, the dimmer it becomes." The happy dolphin breeches in her chuckle again. "Now, goodness knows it's much more complicated than that, but it's my Drewbie who's the therapy expert in our family, not me."

You turn to look into her eyes, the black beads that have always reminded you of Plastic, and instead you see in them her son's larger, slightly lighter ones, waiting to console you. Certainly you are aware, as her disclaimer shows that even she is, the solution is not that simple. Yet the deeper you look, the more you long to believe the hope in her eyes.

If only you could manipulate internal reflections as well as the external.

The unwelcome – Jasper, the Crystal Gem with the battering fists, Peridot in the interrogation room, and especially Malachite – continue to traipse through your mind to this day. They circle around like a swarm of corruptions, and there was a time their presence could bully yours into silence. Now you have begun to strike back, a fact that serves to pack your gem with granite whenever you think of it.

Mama Lipsky's fingers warm your scalp, unexpected heat vents on the seabed. "I'm sure as long as your lifespan is," she says, "there will be a time when the ocean doesn't frighten you anymore."Her admiration is evident. "And in the meantime, Drewbie and I would _love_ to be your safe place."

You close your eyes for an instant. She is not the only one feeling admiration. Yours, however, is skittish. It has spent so much time bubbled inside you, denied healing past a certain stage, that it has almost forsaken its ability to re-form, and you don't know if Mama Lipsky can see it when you push it in her direction.

Water has always been one of your closest companions and surely the most consistent. Always dependable, within the last dozen or so tides it has evolved into something dark and volatile.

Both of you have.

Mama Lipsky's legs cross in front of her, forming a small, snug lap reminiscent of Steven's. The soft folds create a perfect resting place for her hands. Even with fatigue depleting her features, there is a serenity about her that you covet fiercely. You are surprised enough of your Elite character remains to find the feeling rough and unfamiliar.

Underneath all of the ocean-floor grime you cannot swish away, though, there is a tiny, surviving shard of kindness. It glimmers now in Mama Lipsky's company, just as it does around her son or around Steven.

And you know you will dedicate the remainder of your existence to preserving that shard.

All at once the thought exhausts you. It is not the exhaustion that comes from governing a fusion to the point of collapse, but the exhaustion of a tree in one of the Earth storms you observed from the mirror: too solidly rooted to fear for its own shattering, yet still hurting as branches crack off and leaves are stolen by the wind, desperate for a break in the storm.

You let your head tip forward, ever so slightly. Your hands are sent out ahead of it, and they find the softest fabric you have felt on Earth as of yet. With caution, you place your head on your crossed forearms. The couch begins to slowly distance itself from underneath you, until it could be lightyears away and you are submerged in a reflection beyond your control.

It opens with a crystalline ocean, where the sun's light, rather than blocking all else from view by glimpsing off the surface, turns underneath it and suffuses the Aquamarine sides with translucence. Waves lower themselves to the shore and then gather again as they are pulled back out, singing your name.

And there is nothing else for the rest of the night.

When you surface again the next morning, the sun is favoring this side of the planet once more. Everything – the pale light peeking through the window-cloth, birdsong more melodious than the squawks of shorebirds, and the first stirrings of your wings – seems pink and washed in some manner or another. Even the Earth's gravitational pull has become familiar to your physical form. You realize with a shallow pang that you would need to readjust if you ever _were_ to return to the planet to which you once pledged your loyalty.

Lifting your head, you find both that the weight in its center has lessened and that it was at rest in Mama Lipsky's lap. Mama Lipsky herself sits propped upright; her face, however, sags the same way Drakken's does when he falls into sleep. Her butterfly mouth gawks, a barely perceptible dangling of saliva in the corner. You look at her, studying the nose and the chin and the ears that she somehow replicated for her son while he was still cooking inside her, and you smile.

You're unsure how long you stay like that before Mama Lipsky too awakens. She yawns as humans do, stretches her arms above her head, and rapidly blinks her eyes as they power back up.

"Good morning, Lapis," Mama Lipsky says. Though her voice is dusty from a night of nonuse, it is as shrill and lovely as ever. "Are you feeling better today?"

She pushes herself forward, one hand on the indentation of her back. You watch it, wondering if it is also like Drakken's, so defenseless against aches and creakings.

"Yeah. I really am," you say. "You really didn't have to stay out here with me all night, though. I mean – it was nice – but you could have gone back to your room and slept there, and I would have been fine –"

Mama Lipsky swats away that last word as though it has ceased to mean anything to her. "Nonsense. Dear heart, that was not the first time I've sat up through the night with a frightened child.

"And what I said last night?" She wraps her small plump hands around your fingerprints. "I meant every bit of it."

The pinch in your gem subsides. You assess your gratitude, the length and width of it. To funnel it into speech is to squeeze an Era I Peridot from an Era II's hole, but you owe it to her to try.

"Thanks, Mama...Lipsky," you say.

The anticipated response of "You're welcome" is accompanied by something you never would have anticipated. Mama Lipsky flings her trustworthy arms around you and brings you in closer. Her hug is remarkably similar to her son's. With her slightly wiggling skin, there is a firmness there that can only come from love.

You know then what it is to be rePurposed, and that is something you never would have discovered on Homeworld.

It isn't long after that Dr. Drakken arrives, pressing the door-chime. The two of you open the door and there he is, grinning on the front stoop, looking rather pink and washed himself. Mama Lipsky gives him a hug and a squeeze of the cheek, which he accepts grudgingly yet without protest.

There is a strange simple machine, constructed of wood, on the flat area adjacent to the set of steps, and Drakken sits upon it now. It reminds you something of a bench, except its legs have been misplaced and it has been suspended from the above railings with several cables.

"It's a porch swing," Dr. Drakken says when you ask. "Only it's not built to swoosh back and forth like the swings at the park, so don't try it! If you do, the swing will break and fall to the ground – you'll sprain your wrist _and_ have to pay to fix the swing! Well, at least, that's what happened to this one friend of mine when he was a kid. The buffo – the rather clumsy child?" He holds his hand about five centimeters short of his own head.

"Ron? With the speckles?" you supply, tapping your cheeks where Ron's brown spots are scattered.

Drakken chortles, a rumble that takes shape in his neck and then reverberates down into the deepest facets of his body, jerking it around giddily. "Speckles. I like that. But – yes, Ron. I can never remember that, for some reason…"

The _porch swing_ 's seat is wide enough for at least two people, so you carefully hike your knees up next to him. "I heard a couple things last night that I'm wondering about," you say.

"By all means, then!" Drakken holds out his chest even as he wipes a few tufts of the flaky nighttime substance from his eyes.

"So – what does 'wetting the bed' mean?" you ask.

The ragged squeak that slips from him, the stricken red that immediately shades his cheeks, make no other answer necessary.

You don't ask any more questions.


	18. Mall

**~In which Lapis visits a human mall. Last chapter before we head back to Beach City!**

 **On another note: when is this show coming back? I haven't seen a word about its return, and I'm not sure I've even caught so much as a rerun all summer. I know it's not the fault of the show's staff, but I'm starting to wonder what gives on Cartoon Network's end. . .**

 **Ah, well. Enjoy.~**

Everything is going well now.

 _Too_ well.

You have not been the subject of so extended a period of care and admiration since the time when you were among Blue Diamond's finest, long before the war; you don't trust such treatments anymore. There is pain in the recollection that you and your ilk were both venerated and envied by other classes of Gems, some common servants, others so poorly cut that their existences never overlapped yours. Some of the Elite were cruel, and while you like to think you were never among them, your perception of good and bad has been shifted enormously in this time on Earth.

But you _were_ complacent, you know that. It was the life for which you pined while lying on your back, watching the stars' revisions from behind glass; the life you flew back home seeking, and it would be so easy to return to it.

This is why you tell Dr. Drakken you want to go back to Beach City soon.

You do not tell him that is _why_ you want to go back to Beach City soon. "I'm starting to miss Steven," you say to him, and that's not a lie.

The blackness beneath Drakken's eyes pouches, crestfallen, and yet he nods with an understanding you watch him retrieve. "Can you – can I ask you to stay just one more day? I wanted to show you the mall before you left. It's the biggest deal in Middleton." His smile is a simple, sweet line. "At least, the biggest deal in Middleton that isn't run by someone with a daughter I used to try to destroy or inventions I used to steal."

It is strange being reminded that once Drakken once meant the Earth harm, stranger than the sudden weather swings on this planet. Paradoxically, it makes you feel safer with him, knowing that is what he has escaped. You agree to one more day in his town.

The mall looks the same upon your return as it did the day you flew over it on your way to Drakken's house: large, long, and purple, and far nicer than you would have expected from the building where Drakken once had a lip-fusion forced onto him. It is surrounded by a scattering of those odd Earth-machines Steven called _cars_ , the ones that humans use for transport and occasionally for living quarters. There seem to be quite a few of them, sitting emptily between pairs of parallel white stripes, and you wonder uneasily just how crowded the mall will be.

Yet once you enter through a fancy set of doors that open themselves at your approach, the building is roomy enough for the humans to mill about as they please and not collide with one another as they do so. It is, in fact, multiple stories high, each level connected with two sets of those rippling stairs – "scoochers," the Rubies used to call them, which you always considered kind of cute. There are pots of green plants that match the ones next to you now, a certain charm to their irregular placement, though when you touch the one beside you, its leaves are waxy and it is clearly no more organic than you are.

"Fake plants don't die," Dr. Drakken explains when you lift confused eyes to him. "The neat thing is, I don't even have to touch them anymore to see if they're real or not. These guys –" he taps the side of his neck – "pick up it right away, and they report back to me. It's quite marvelous, really, although I'm still trying to get used to it..."

"I'm still trying to get used to _every_ thing," you reply, and you take another step forward. The glass dome above you reminds you of your trips to Pink Diamond's human zoo, and you are surprisingly relieved to watch the humans move freely. Several sections of the walls split open, forming pocket rooms housed with everything from baseball gloves and protective helmets for fragile human heads to precious Earth-stones on chains. The floor beneath you is a slightly duller hue than an Aquamarine, hard yet spongy, similar to the valleys on Kindergarten Base 50.

Another planet whose "conversion" you abetted.

The reminder of it sticks to your Gem like a wad of algae, and you turn to Drakken once more. "Where to first?" you ask.

Drakken's face floods with excitement. "Oooh, so hard to choose! There's – oohh, but that's also pretty amazing – but then there's –" He finally grips his own forehead between two fingers. "Mnng. You know what? We should stop by Hair Apparent first. I've been meaning to restock my shampoo."

"What?" you say.

"Hair soap."

You cross with Drakken over to a pocket room that must be under the same jurisdiction as the haircutting salon back in Beach City. Great expanses of the wall feature magnified portraits of humans with that hair that must surely be welded into place and fingernails, suspended just inside the edges of the picture, whose tapers could have been forged by a Bismuth.

Beside you, Drakken's right arm twinges. "Pretty creepy, huh?" he says in his loud whisper.

You shrug. "Not really. They're just photos. Definitely not as bad as those – what did you call those back this summer? Mani-kens?"

" _Mannequins_ , yes." Drakken rubs his small hands up and down his sleeves. "Ohh, those things are the stuff of _nightmares_ , I tell you! Why, did you know that some of them don't even have _heads_ nowadays?"

"They don't have _heads_?" you repeat. "How come?"

"I had no idea, so I asked Shego. She said it was 'too much work' to construct heads when it was the bodies that modeled the clothes."

"That's weird," you say, perhaps too judgmentally. Within a hundred years' time, Homeworld will be working with such scant resources that Era III Peridots could be headless as well. At least you will not be around to see that.

Drakken pulls you down an aisle of shelves. The layout reminds you somewhat of a library, only its smell is zestier and the placement of the objects sterner than the carefree way the books fall on each other. The floor is as white as the heart of a dwarf star, and you are almost afraid to step on it. It turns out to be safe, if slick and alarmingly free of traction.

"You know, one time I invented a shampoo that brainwashed people," Drakken says. His expression drifts away for a moment, lower lip wistful as he stares at the ceiling and sees what you suspect is something else altogether. "If it had just _sold_ , the planet would have been mine for sure!"

"Tough break," you say, patting his arm. You don't pretend to understand humans and their grooming rituals.

Drakken shakes his head, the ends of his hair cracking off his cheeks. "Ah, well. I suppose it was all for the best. Now, let's see…where is that…?" His buoy-voice trails off, tangles in disgust. "Oh, of _course_ it's on the top shelf!" When Drakken reaches out a hand, even stretching high onto the heads of his toes, his scrawny fingers fall several inches short. "Lapis…I don't suppose you could…?"

"Gotcha covered." You turn a thumb up to him, release your wings, and fly up to the top shelf, where a line of bottles stands in muted colors. "Which bottle?" you say.

"The brown one. Not the blue one, ironically enough," Drakken calls.

You pick up a container that feels surprisingly hefty, as though the soap inside is quite dense. Perhaps it has to be, to fully clean the thick thornbush of Drakken's hair.

"Thank you, Lapis," Drakken says when you deposit the hair soap into his waiting hands.

"You're welcome. All right, where do we go next?"

You have taken three steps toward the door when Drakken halts you with a hiss of, "No – Lapis! Hang on a second! I need to pay for this."

"Pay?" Its sound suggests retribution; you remember the villains on the silly mystery show – humans all – crying, "You'll _pay_ for this!" as Earth's legal officers drag them away to the dungeon.

"Give them some money," Drakken says, the buoys licked by a patient current. "So I can buy this."

"Wait – that takes money?" It is as if a restrictive touch moves over the pocket room, tensing its open palm, expecting payment from Drakken for something surely anyone can see he deserves. "You can't just have it?"

Dr. Drakken blinks wide, ingenuous eyes at you. "Well, no. That's called _stealing_. People can get sent to _prison_ " – his voice wavers – "for that."

"Really?" you say.

"Really! Oh, not right away, of course. . . I found that out just a few weeks into my reformation, when I was buying groceries – food and such things. I – eh-heh – inadvertently didn't add a head of cabbage to the tally, and when I walked out the door, the alarms went off, and I thought, _That's it! It's all over for me!_ " Drakken flings his arms out, as though in supplication for mercy. "But the man behind the counter just said it sounded like I'd forgotten to pay for something, so I brought the head of cabbage back and paid for it, and I walked out of that store a free man! BUT if you absolutely _refuse_ to pay for something, _then_ you get in trouble."

The buoy-words string toward the horizon, no end in sight. You frown at them. "So – wait – cabbages have heads and mannequins don't?" you say.

Drakken's lower lip edges briefly downward, then rolls back into place with his chuckle. "Oh! My bad! _Heads_ of cabbage just means those big old bunches of them all balled up so that it's sort of the same shape as a head. Not _my_ head, but your average person's."

"But you _saved_ the world," you say. "Aren't you allowed to have anything you want? I mean, within reason?"

For an instant, everything on Drakken inclines upward, and then he is shaken by a look like an underwater quake and begins a grim study of the ceiling. "Ooohh, those are dangerous words to say to a former supervillain," he says. "They make entirely too much sense to me!" His hands collide, the thumbs tumbling over each other again and again. "There are such things as _discounts_ , where certain people get the same item for a reduced price… There's employee discounts, veteran discounts…"

"Veterans of what?" you ask.

"Of a war. Any war."

Drakken is so deep into the explanation that he does not notice how that single word razes the length of your back.

"So, wait, let me get this straight. _Jasper_ could get a discount here, but you couldn't?" you protest, rather shrilly. This makes even less sense than cabbages with heads.

The thumbs cinch. "Well, errrgh, when you put it that way…"

You sniff without planning it. "On Homeworld, we didn't even use money."

"Well, that's all well and good, Lapis," Drakken says, "but it's a lot easier for a species to live like that when they don't need to buy food or clothes. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone just ran off with whatever they wanted? It would be global chaos!"

You suppose that it would play out that way, with no centralized authority figure like the Diamonds, and Earth certainly has no need of any more chaos. Yet there is still a part of you, the part that feels torn to pieces and scattered whenever you look at the Crystal Gems, that wants to forever hold the notion of your people and their inherent nobility.

His begging eyes receive a demure, halfhearted nod in return. "I guess," you say with a shrug. "But how do humans _get_ the money?"

"Usually from our jobs. You know, our Purposes?" The corners of Drakken's mouth perk your way. "Humans get paid for those. And a lot of times, if there's a human who's having bad luck and hasn't found a Purpose yet, other humans that have money to spare will give them things that they'll need until they can 'stand on their own two feet,' as they say."

You recall your first wobbling steps without the stocky Gem's arm to lean on, and no explanation is required.

 _There_ is the species that Rose Quartz was willing to split her own in half in order to protect. Though your confusion does not wane, it firms up, supporting your body.

You follow Drakken to a long off-white counter similar to the one in Steven's kitchen, except that the metal box sitting atop it bears little resemblance to a microwave. It is more of a trapezoid shape, shorter on the top than the bottom, with a laser growing out of its side; the woman standing there zaps Drakken's shampoo bottle with it, punches something on keys that are upraised like the small brown decoration on Mama Lipsky's chin, and speaks a foreign amount. Drakken digs that number of green money-papers from his wallet and hands them to her. She smiles at the both of you and tells you to have a nice day.

The main area of the mall welcomes you back, just large enough and just small enough, just bright enough and just dark enough, to put you at ease. When Dr. Drakken pieces his hand to yours, it is one of those rare moments where your nose relaxes, forgetting the second gem that once flattened it.

The next shop in line is fronted by a sign as tall as Steven that proclaims, "EAR-PIERCING!" You survey the interior, squinting, but catch no glimpses of Wailing Stones or Homeworld's more modern sonic weapons.

You nudge Drakken in the bony spot above his belt and tip your head toward the sign. "What do they pierce your ears with?" you say.

"Jewelry," he replies.

You can tell your face is a contortion of horror; it couldn't possibly be anything else at the thought of spears being lowered into human ears and skewering them with jewelry. Are there classes of humans who subject themselves to pain in the hopes of becoming as hard and seasoned as a Quartz warrior? "That's awful," you say. "How do they hear after that?"

Drakken's long eyebrow rises in increments like scoocher steps. "Wha? Ohhhhhhh, oh, Lapis! They pierce the _outside_ of the ear! Here!" He shakes the small tab of skin under his ear's entrance. "The useless part! It still stings a little – or so I've been told – but nothing vital gets damaged."

"Oh," you say softly. You give your shoulders a nonchalant wiggle and raise your voice a notch. "Well, that's a relief. Good to know."

 _Good to know humans aren't_ that _absurd._

You pull the thought back under. Delighted laughter is spurting from Dr. Drakken even now. He has never treated you as though you are an irksome little alien, as though he thinks of you the way you once thought of his kind. You could never consider him an inferior being – yet centuries upon centuries of your engrained Teachings cannot be shed in the same manner as unwanted liquids.

Several paces north of the ear-piercing place lies a stand with approximately the same shape and mobility of a palanquin; only its wood, though solid looking, does not have titanium reinforcement and small trundling wheels on each of its four corners appear to be what makes it move. It is also topped with a curtain that, rather than a spectral veil flowing to the ground, is a sturdy cloth that cups the ceiling the way your bob cups your face. Its body surrounds the woman inside it, and you are relieved to see that one of the sides is on a hinge, allowing it to swing open so she can exit.

It is obviously a mercantile station like the sort you have seen in Beach City, yet you cannot fathom what it is she plans to give in exchange for money. Several small, near-transparent tubes point upright. Growing from them are smudged plateaus, mostly reddish. Next to it, an open tube is situated on a napkin, directly beside something thin-handled like an Aquamarine's wand, which is bristling with fibers that remind you of Dr. Drakken's hair, only stiffer-looking. A viscous black substance drips from the bristles on the tip of the wand. Farther down are squares and circles that would fit in the palm of your tiny hand, peeled back to display powders of blue and green, violet and coral, most in shades too pale to correspond to any Gem you know. The sign overhead says they are "beauty products," and while they are pretty, it doesn't help you understand their Purpose.

"What are those?" you ask, tugging Drakken's sleeve.

"That's make-up," Drakken says.

"Make-up?" you repeat. The word brings to mind construction, analysis of a planet's structure, and you fail to see where these would be needed.

Drakken nods and secures one arm behind his back, the first finger of the other hand pointed importantly upward. "The fancy term for it is _cosmetics_. They're little gels or powders that people –mostly women – use on their faces to…to…" The leveled shoulders shrug. "I'm not entirely sure. I guess they think it makes them prettier."

"By painting their faces different colors?" you say. It is not so much shocking, that humans can tire of their bland skin tones and unfortunate inability to shapeshift, as it is sad.

"Not their _whole_ faces," Drakken says, "not usually at least." He gestures widely to the bristle-tipped tubes, the plateau tubes, the circles, and the squares each in turn. "That's mascara. People put in on their eyelashes. That's lipstick – for their lips, of course. That's blush – to make people's cheeks look pinker. And that…" His eyes lose their focus and wander toward each other. "That, I'm not sure. I think they might use it on their eyelids?"

You hike one shoulder at him; you cannot look away from the tubes of lip enhancers in every shade from sunrise to sunset, from Ruby to _angry_ Ruby. Nestled at the far end of that row is an Obsidian option.

Now you know how pallid-green Shego can have lips so dark.

The woman behind the counter gives the two of you a wave, which Dr. Drakken returns. You, however, feel your arms pulling inward, along with your wings and the corners of your mouth. She is an uncharted terrain that you do not wish to renovate right now, and you put your head down and hustle away from her in Drakken's shadow.

Not far from that sits another wooden structure, this one unmanned and wrapped lengthwise by the types of tanks in which human swimmers will tote their oxygen, only smaller and clear, filled with things other than air: small fragments of solids that stack nearly to their lids. Drakken tells you, with his tongue swiping his lips, these are different varieties of _snacks_ , which are the food humans eat if they get hungry between meals.

The ones round as Quartz's gems are labeled _M &M_s. The ones beside them are almost identical, only with thicker coatings and more urgent coloring; they are called _Skittles_. The fiery ones with joint-like curves are _Red Hots_ and, next to them, the long skinny ones that apparently only occur in green and red are known as _Mike & Ike._ You wander from one tank to the next, running your fingers across the glass down to the metal vent at the bottom that instructs you to insert something called _cents_ – which must not be very big for twenty-five of them to fit in a slot that small – and turn the accompanying knob sharply to the right.

It's the fifth one, stocked with dull, point-edged slivers, where your fingers fumble and catch in the slot. Rather than a designation, this tank is overtaken by a name as familiar to you as your own voice and an insignia more familiar still.

 _Blue Diamond Almonds._

You briefly wonder if this is part of the Diamonds' new plan for Earth – and if so, why they are so boldly touting themselves – if Blue Diamond is attempting to smuggle more bioweapons into the Earth's crust – and if so, why someone besides you hasn't noticed how out of place it is among a display of snacks at a mall.

In a moment, Homeworld's rapport overcomes you. You can feel it clamped to your back, and you are bidden to smooth out your posture, chin tilted higher and ankles parallel. Yet all of that is washed back out by the reverence that settles over you, soothing every crevice of your gem, straight down to the crux where your deepest fears are hidden.

Your arms act on an instinct older than Earth's galaxy, almost as though not of their own volition. The wrists lift and intersect, and the hands dip in toward each other to create the Diamond salute. The rest of you is more hesitant. You know now that Blue Diamond is not the faultless, all-merciful ruler you once believed her to be, but before you met Steven and Drakken, everything you had you owed to her. Shouldn't that be worthy of your respect, if not your devotion?

"Ma'am," you say in your quietest voice, so quiet you can only prove it is there by the momentary warmth on your lips. You slant your head toward the ground, press your heels together, and spread your skirt into a curtsy. Your eyes slip shut in deference – it comes so easily, even now – while you deny yourself so much as a breath lest it be something your Diamond needs more than you do.

For an instant, the rubberized mall floor beneath your bare feet is as sacred as the stone of the Sea Spire.

Then Dr. Drakken is bent over beside you, hissing across your face, "Ummm…Lapis? What is this about?"

You open your eyes, glance this way and that. She is nowhere near here, but you cannot rule out the possibility that these _almonds_ transmit your subservient figure and Drakken's bewildered one back to her palace.

With a finger that barely holds steady, you point to the Blue Diamond symbol on the tank. "Can't you…bow or something?" you whisper. "I don't want her to think my friends are impolite!"

There are several moments where Drakken stares with utter blankness at the symbol before he gurgles – a sound of understanding, you would wager. He props one ungainly arm in front of his waist and folds the upper half of his body over it, his balance thrown off-kilter as he struggles back up with your hands to help.

"Look," Drakken says once he is upright again, "I don't mean to burst your bubble or anything – because that was really sweet of you – and also slightly concerning – but Blue Diamond is just the name of a brand that sells nuts. They're based in Sacramento – which is in California – which is a state on the coast _opposite_ Beach City –"

You interrupt, your back cold. "Blue Diamond has workers on the _coast_?" If she is setting up by the ocean, that must mean she is planning to assemble the remaining Lapises soon.

"It's run by humans, Lapis!" Drakken drags frantic fingers below his eyes. "Not aliens. Their CE – their boss is human. I know because Kim Possible once helped save their facility after an earthquake left it cracked in half. She constructed a makeshift bridge out of experimental formula her tech-kid had given her and a few things her boyfriend had in his backpack… and she's the kind of girl who notices alien tech…"

The buoy-words continue, but you absorb nothing further. You glance back at the almond tank. "So – it's not run by my – by Blue Diamond?" you say, and your wings cringe ever so slightly. If Drakken is wrong and she is listening, you may have just sentenced yourself. Still, where would she have hidden so that someone inside the plant wouldn't have seen her? Blue Diamond's graceful, cloaked figure is impossible to miss.

"ERrrm, no. Not unless things have substantially changed there in the last year," Drakken says. His grin is heavier than usual, not as effortless, and you think you see some pity in him.

You cross your arms, which bristle like the _mascara_ brush, threatening to burst every water fountain in the building. "Then why the name? Why the symbol? Those are _hers_." You are almost surprised by your stabbing tone, but not quite.

"Because…" Drakken runs a hand down the back of his head. "I don't know. Probably because they thought it was pretty." The grin lightens somewhat. "Which it is, of course."

It is no longer pity woven into his voice, although it isn't reverence either. _Tolerance_ , you think you would call it – as if just for this blink of time, Blue Diamond matters to him.

"Yeah. It really is." You stand straighter and swallow your powers, store them back inside you. "So – what are _almonds_ , anyway?"

Drakken's expression brightens considerably, and he skitters along beside you, enraptured by his own explanation of how almonds are nuts, which are food, related to fruit, and have hard shells. You do your best to listen as you take several rapid, meaningful steps away from the almonds and the glittering reflection of Blue Diamond's court they brought. You don't know if it was privilege or burden you felt come over you then, only that it must be left behind.

Clumsily navigating among more scoochers and more plants cozying into corners, Drakken strides ahead and leads you to an area large enough for the crowd to dispel some. You neither see nor hear anything beyond that, as in a moment you are permeated by a relationship: something that, if possible, is even more innate than the Diamond salute.

Sure enough, when your vision clears, you see it. Docked in the center of the clearing is an oblong pool, large enough to have cleared any similar objects from its orbit. It appears to be self-contained, although profuse amounts of water sleek down into it from a second, smaller basin above, suspended in that illusive fashion that humans use to make their unspectacular architecture seem magical. At the top of the basin, spindly streams of water lift in curves like the necks of lake-birds before plunging back down to join their kind in the pool below.

Every droplet sends you a greeting, and not out of mere duty. Your powers prance nervously within you, still sore from your overexertion and from Jasper's mishandling of them, still self-conscious of their edges and their depths. Yet part of you, somewhere in your very essence, is drawn toward this instrument that gives with generosity and takes with brutality.

Dr. Drakken must feel your bowstring-tautness because his small, reliable hand stiffens in yours. "Lapis?" he says. "Are you all right? Is this – is the water okay? Is it too much like the O-C-E-A-N?"

There is something about to his quizzical expression, the entirety of his mouth bunched to the left, that causes you to laugh out loud. "I can connect letters, Drakken," you say. "And this is fine. Honest."

"Good then." Drakken blinks at you, with caution, and then speeds his eyes away; they land on something that brings a sparkle to them and saliva to his lips. "Oooh, Lapis, look!"

You follow his lively grin more than the pointing of his finger to another shop. This one is more like one of Beach City's open markets, no doors and no front wall to enter. There is only a stone countertop that broadens considerably at the bottom and is screened by a steeply slanted sheet of glass.

"Food court!" Drakken cries and bolts for it.

Food's court is much less regimented than Blue Diamond's, you decide once you are inside. Young people around Kim and Ron's age flit back and forth, each one wearing their Purposed clothing. One girl has rubies even smaller than their sentient counterparts jabbed through the soft lower part of her ear, as Drakken said. A metal rack spreads warmth as it rotates. Hooked from its prongs are fleshy rolls, shaped almost to be round until you reach the top, where they separate into arms that reach for opposite sides, intersecting at the midpoint, a misshapen salute. They are sprinkled with some sort of brown dust.

It's what is beyond the glass screen that Drakken is taken with, however. "BEHOLD!" he says, sweeping his arms widely toward it.

You peer inside to see many small tubs filled with slightly different colors of something moist, smooth, and sweet-swelling.

"Ice cream?" you say, glancing back up at Drakken.

"Indeed it is." Drakken thrusts his chest forward, and you are reminded of a primitive human announcing that he has located a fertile place for his tribe to hunt and gather. "And you may pick any flavor you like!" His elbow gives yours a nudge and then accidentally slips behind it so that he barely avoids a fall.

There are no less than three rows with at least six tubs in each row; some have only a few dents in them, while other are nearly hollowed in, with only stray chunks clinging to the sides – but your gaze runs right to the one you want. "Can I just have white?" you ask either Drakken or the ruby-eared girl behind the counter.

They both nod. Drakken's shoulders stammer with laughter as he reaches into his wallet for some papered money. "Two small cones," he tells the counter girl. "One triple-chocolate, one vanilla."

After wiping the cavernous spoon on the white stretch of fabric over her torso, the girl submerges it first into the deep-dark brown and then into the white. She hands both cones over along with the gentle smile it is so easy to give Dr. Drakken. "Enjoy," she says.

You surprise even yourself by ducking your head.

"Are you ever going to try any other flavors?" Drakken asks as you stroll back toward the clearing in the floor.

You run your tongue over the cold that tastes of welcome memories. "Yeah. Someday. Right now, I just needed… _vanilla_. But the pink topaz looks good, too."

"Strawberry," Drakken says, his lips nearly losing their morsel of ice cream.

"Whatever." You shrug.

The next shop you pass has doors, along with a limestone-board like the one Peridot stores in the barn. "FREE WIFI!" it reads.

"What's a free wiffie?" you say, tilting your head toward the sign. "Do I want one?"

A "wha?" comes from Drakken, before his eyes trace the sign and light with a conclusion. "Oh! That says 'free Wi-Fi.' Which is another name for 'wireless Internet.'"

"A net?" You frown, attempting to picture how anyone could wirelessly construct a net. "Like a fishing net?"

"Urrgh! The English language!" Drakken dramatically claps a fist over his forehead. "The Internet isn't really a net at all. It's a way of passing along information electronically, rather than physically handing it to someone. I think the 'net' bit comes from 'network,' but don't quote me on that. I was rather busy trying to dominate the planet during its advent, so I missed a few things…"

"Oh. Yeah, we have that." You pause. "It took you this long to get yours wireless?"

"Hush, you," Drakken says, nestling his chin, sticky with ice cream, onto the top of your head.

He then has trouble removing it, and has to give his neck a violent jerk. Four strands of your hair snap off, and your gem immediately manifests four more to fill the stinging holes left behind.

For too brief a time, you forget your people's electronic communications, how what started as a simple convenience evolved into an omnipresence during your time away.

"Would you be up for going and sitting by the fountain?" Drakken says.

"By the F-O-U-N-T-A-I-N?" you say, giggling. "I'm all right with that."

The two of you find a bench, one that has legs and doesn't swing, several meters away from the fountain. You sit down, Dr. Drakken's feet dangling above the floor's sponginess, your own toes just barely grazing it. Soft music drifts from a spot on the ceiling directly above the fountain.

Drakken's legs twiddle back and forth, and his gaze travels somewhere beyond him. "Boy, what Global Justice wouldn't give for some of your Gem tech! Ooh – sorry – should I not have brought that up?"

His head is tilted in an apologetic manner; your unease is exiled to a bubble, unable to reform. In its place, you find a hint of slyness. "Actually," you say, "I was wondering if Global Justice would _like_ some of our tech."

"What are you saying here?" Drakken asks, squinting at you.

"I'm saying that I do know how _some_ of our tech works. The older stuff, but it's still way beyond anything they have on Earth right now. I could tell you how it works, and then you could bring the ideas to Global Justice and look like the smartest man on the planet."

The blackest parts of Drakken's eyes are stars peeking from behind a hazy atmosphere. "That's tempting. Verrrry tempting. Very, _very_ tempting!" His belly caves inward, and the air he inhales seems to swirl like hurricane winds. "Entirely too tempting – to pass off someone else's work as my own!"

There is a struggle in his swaying legs now, and you rush to appease it. "Oh, I wouldn't mind if you took the credit," you say, voice light and informal like Kim's.

Dr. Drakken's smile finally returns, dripping with brown ice cream, one corner higher and more rueful than the other. "Well, thank you, and I'm quite sure you wouldn't. But I'm talking about for _me_. If I start lying again, who _knows_ what will become of me?!"

His words are blunt and creaking, and yet he is not using them for clubs, not wielding them so much as they wield him. You hadn't even thought of it as lying. Your honesty has become quite a bit more flexible in the dark times since the War. But seeing Drakken cringe away from deception as though it will surely corrupt him, it feels that your gem hangs crooked in its setting.

"I guess, that even if you said they came from your alien girlfriend, you'd still be the first human that anyone ever trusted with those ideas, and you'd be the first to figure out how to apply them. They should still admire you for that," you say with a shrug.

Drakken taps one finger to his temple. "Lapis, I like the way you think."

That reassures you. "Besides, I kind of like the way Earth is now," you say. "Reminds me of how Homeworld used to be, back before the – back when things were good.

"Good for _me_ ," you clarify. You feel the strip of skin beneath your eyes glowing a darker blue.

This _is_ , you remind yourself, the planet that granted you asylum, even after you had walked off with its ocean and left three-fourths of its surface a labyrinth of exposed chasms and volcanoes that separated the continents. Surely that should curb your natural instinct to terraform it.

You glance back over one shoulder and switch topics. "So – what do you think would happen if I went into that jewelry store and asked them to pierce my ears?"

Drakken wheezes, and his mouthful of ice cream rockets onto the cuff of his sleeve. "Well," he says, after a period of gruff hacks, "they would probably spend a long time lifting your hair and feeling around. And then they'd get _very_ confused." He looks at you with mischief that you know mimics your own, only larger and louder.

You laugh along with him. You can picture on the humans what you have seen on Sapphires who have leaned too heavily on one future only to have it not be the one that ended up coming true: faces wadded in bewilderment, groping for something suitably diplomatic to say, their sweat beading into ice crystals when it becomes obvious that there is nothing.

"Sorry that I…uh…rained on your parade back there," Drakken says. "With the almonds and everything."

You know that a _parade_ is a hero's celebration. You also know that there _is_ rain on this planet, although Dr. Drakken has no command of it. It isn't incredibly hard to guess what happens to a parade if a rainstorm begins while it is in progress.

"That's okay." You glance downward, concealing each blush-point with a piece of hair. "I think that parade – needed to be rained on."

You are still on Earth, after all. There are no quasars, no visible supernovas, and certainly no remnant of Homeworld's hierarchy. Your compatriots now include an illicit fusion, a stunted Quartz warrior, and a strangely assertive _Pearl_ – all three of whom display a level of courage you have yet to attain.

Drakken uses the sleeve that is already messy to wipe his mouth, and then a splotch of vanilla-white from your bare arm. "How so?" he says.

You stare hard at your knees. "I mean – I really appreciate everything you've done. But I don't need you to keep pampering me. I got enough of that on Homeworld."

There are no increments to Dr. Drakken's eyebrow this time. As is more typical of it, it makes an abrupt leap to the peak of his forehead at the exact moment of his startling. " _Pampering_?" he repeats, as if it is a Gem term that has no meaning to his culture.

"Yeah. Looking out for me, trying so hard not to upset me by saying things like 'mirror' or…or 'war' or even 'tech.' Giving me gifts, buying me food that I don't even need just because I like it. I'm an Elite, okay?" you spit. "Or I _was_. If you keep taking such good care of me, I'll go back to being the spoiled little prissy Gem I was before the War – back when things were good – and I won't be any good to anyone."

You pause for a moment and you breathe, unnecessarily, just for the sensation of gathering. You were, you hope, never _despotic_ in your standing back on Homeworld, yet how many times did you pass Blue Diamond's Pearl without ever once attempting to make conversation? How many times did you sit in silent compliance while the other Lapises sneered over some Peridot or Bismuth?

Drakken's upper lip pokes out like a plank of driftwood. "Jeepers," he says at last. "That…that was not where I was expecting that to go. Lapis – what do you mean by 'elite'? I mean, I know the dictionary definition – don't ask me to recite it, though, because I don't do well under pressure – but what does it mean in, shall we say, Homeworld terms?"

The bones of his cheeks are perked forward, the left one especially intense under its mended crack. If you saw even a trace of judgment, you would fold your wings around you and cocoon yourself in shame.

"I was a member of Blue Diamond's court," you say, in a voice so distant it could be someone else's altogether. "The Elite aren't soldiers. We're considered too valuable to fight. We have Purposes that are essential for Homeworld's survival, but we don't do petty labor – we get sent on missions of great honor. All the other Gems envy us, because we get treated like we're better than the rest of them. And we're told we're better than the rest of them. Our whole lives are one big privilege. And I can't go back to that, not while Steven's still fighting for Earth. Not while Jasper's still out there somewhere."

Drakken cocks his head even as he shakes it. "Really? I can't ever picture you as spoiled and prissy." His buoy-words want to wash into you, you can tell, and yet all your currents are rushing, guarded, with no place thin enough for him to enter.

"Well, I can't ever see you as mean and power-hungry, so I guess we're even," you say.

Though Dr. Drakken's cheeks become pleased pillows, his fragile body remains tensed. "Well, thank you. But Lapis, I –"

You slice off his voice with your own. "No more pampering. I mean it. I need to be strong now," you say, lifting your chin.

"Gghhhk – I _know_ that. Oh, how I know that! That's exactly _why_ I'm doing this."

His confusion borders on frustration, and you feel an odd sense of kinship with him. Eddies of anger are whirling inside your gem. "What do you mean?" you shoot back, careful so as not to shout.

"Well, what I mean is…what I mean is…" Drakken begins to pluck at the air as though he can manipulate it. "What I means is that almost every being, in addition to food or universe juice or whatever – we all run on kindness, too. Kind of like how phones…I'm sorry, is it okay to use technology as an example?"

You raise one eyebrow at him and flatten the rest of your face.

"Erk. Yes. Of course it is. So phones rely on electricity, which of course you know – I mean, Steven has a phone, right?"

"Yeah." Steven owns a flat, unassuming piece, almost primeval by Gem standards, called a _cell phone_ ; you don't know why, for it is no more composed of cells than you are.

"Right. So – phone. Electricity. Kindness." Drakken blinks and his gaze drifts elsewhere. "I was going somewhere with that…"

You drape your arms across the back of the bench and wait. Drakken is fidgeting in his seat, but something about his tone tells you that he isn't _actually_ going somewhere except in his thoughts.

"A-ha! Yes! Now I remember!" Drakken cries. "Phones run on electricity, of course, which they need to be plugged into an outlet to absorb. Once it's charged, the phone stores its electricity in its battery and can be used on the go. Most phones have a pretty long battery life, which is good because you don't often encounter places in the middle of a busy day where you can stop and recharge them."

The weariness in your back begins to wane. In your mind, you approach his theory in timid steps that dare not be hopeful. "So – are you saying that applies to me, too?" you ask.

"Yes! Exactly!" Drakken leans forward, nearly losing the top scoop of his ice cream as he shimmies on his knees. His eyes lock on yours and hold there as if they are robo-drones intent solely on their destination. "Lapis – I'm not trying to pamper you. I'm trying to recharge you – so that when you _do_ have to be unplugged, you'll be able to keep going for a long, long time."

You sit for a moment and you don't even breathe against the feel of your wings, full and healthy and claiming every hollow of your body. If this is the energy of the universe, you have never received so much at once before.

"Thank you," you say at last.

Drakken's feet jounce beneath the bench. "You're welcome," he says shakily.

"But…does it really work?" you ask. You take another lick at your cone.

"Yes. I believe so, yes." Drakken presses the tapering tips of his main fingers to each other with the ice cream behind them. His expression over-labors to be droll, and you are surprised by the giggle you have to suppress. "You know Kim Possible and Shego, of course."

You nod.

"Well, they used to fight. All the time, and I don't mean with their words." Dr. Drakken cringes, either from the memory or from the droplet of ice cream that lands in his lap, which he in his human simplicity cannot flick away. "Shego won a few individual fights, but in the end Kim Possible always emerged triumphant. Oooh, it made me so _mad_!

"Especially because I couldn't find any _reason_ for it. Shego was older and bigger with much more raw natural talent than Kim Possible, _and_ she had both super-powers and a ruthless nature, neither of which Kim Possible possessed! I nearly went mad trying to discover the answer." The bump in Dr. Drakken's throat sways up and down as though scouring it from the inside. "Actually, I think I _did_ go mad…heh…a time or two."

You reflect on the idea of a single, commonplace Quartz warrior shattering a Diamond a hundred times her size and strength, of a ragtag band of rebels chasing away those Purposed all their lives to do battle, of the only Jasper to leave her Kindergarten without any defect subdued by one of Blue Diamond's small, soft-spoken elite; and you shrug. "Sometimes there just aren't answers to that stuff."

Some of the verve leaves Dr. Drakken's shoulders, and the ice cream you love sits in a cold lump in your manifested innards. "Fair point, I suppose." He re-brightens quickly; his grin doesn't fade even as three lopsided petals spring from his neck and he cheerily yanks them out. "As a scientist, however, I appreciate having answers, and I think I may have finally found one! Want to know what it is?"

This time, you nod without hesitance. If he believes he has some answers, you will not be the one to dissuade him.

"Kim Possible had _support_ ," Drakken says. "All kinds of it. Her family always had her back – always were there to help if she needed it, that is. So did that…that boyfriend, who was her best friend long before they started dating. She had another group of close friends at school, and there were a whole bunch-load – as the teens today say – of other humans whom she'd saved from something or another and were always happy to assist her.

"Shego, on the other hand…she didn't have any of that. She walked away from her family a long time ago. She had friends within the villain community, of course, but they were casual friendships, not the kind where you tell your whole life story and get comforted." The throat-bump seems to swell. "She was afraid to let anyone get too close to her."

There is something hauntingly familiar in his description. Only one detail keeps it from achieving reality.

"But she had you," you say.

The skin underneath Drakken's eyes wedges up to the dark circles beneath them. "Yes, well, she didn't trust me either. She knew it was a cutthroat business she was in, and she didn't expect loyalty from her cohorts. For the longest time, she refused to believe that I would've done anything for her if she'd let me." He abandons slurping and takes a large, wild bite of his ice cream. "In her defense, I was so wrapped up in myself that when she made it difficult, I forgot to keep trying."

"Does she trust you now?" you ask.

"Barely," Drakken grumbles. "Apparently it takes quite awhile to overcome a lifetime of pushing other people away. My point being: Shego thought it made her stronger, but it actually weakened her." Drakken flaps his hand through the air. "But if Shego asks, you didn't hear it from me!"

You look at him, and you know your forehead is creased. "If Shego asks, I still _did_ hear it from you. . . but I don't tell her that."

Drakken's fingers click imprecisely off each other. "Exactomundo! Really, it's the only advantage I can find that Kim Possible could've had over her." Drakken releases a hefty sigh. "I don't want to see you get to that point, Lapis. Never, ever, _ever_."

It takes several moments and several more licks of ice cream before the concept crystallizes inside you. If such a short lifetime without trust can damage Shego, the prospect of its harm on an ageless being is staggering. You also see Steven's reflection, Shego's exact opposite, soft and stumbling. He is not merely content with saving his planet – he saves everyone he knows, even those who act against it.

He is the strongest one of them all, human or Gem.

"I know you have to be strong, and I'm not trying to keep you from that." The respect in Dr. Drakken's voice is every bit as gentle and without obligation as it was before learning you were an Elite. "But the more you're taken care of, the more strength you'll have in reverse – errr, make that _reserve_ – when you need it."

Drakken's forehead rumples like a soft sheet of metal. "The better you're taken care of?" he poses. "The more you're taken care of better? Gaagh, I _know_ there's a more eloquent way to say that!"

He is right. And yet there is a misshapen beauty in his words, and something inside your gem rustles to accept it.

You have no choice but to be silent whenever there is a clash in your being, and you are happy to listen when Dr. Drakken adds, "And it's not just that I'm taking care of you, either. You help take care of me – like you did when I was sick." He hooks a chunk of cone with his bottom teeth and slides it in, the lesser blacks of his eyes as loose and sloppy as what remains of his ice cream, ready to run over. "We take care of each _other_. That's what you do in a relationship. It's like – it's kind of like –"

"A fusion." The word upon which your nightmares hang slips softly and unflinchingly from your lips. "A good one, I mean."

Surprise flashes across Drakken's face, only to be quickly overrun by the grin so much like Steven's, the one that attracts the light and then shares it so freely. "Yes! That's it, exactly! A fusion!" His palms clap together with the stump of his cone, gnawed into ragged peaks, between them. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you can't do it," you reply. It's only natural that it would not be the first example to rise in his mind. You release the anchors on your own smile and let it surface. "But you're cool anyway."

Dr. Drakken beams with pride, and you watch his chest ride in and out with his eager breaths. This _does_ feel surprisingly close to what you have seen exchanged between Ruby and Sapphire: a harmony and scope larger than the two of you, and both of you belonging together, rather than one to the other. Drakken's sigh is only a measure behind yours.

Your legs feel as though you have unraveled them and found them to be much longer than you anticipated them to be. A disturbance rings through your physical form, conditioned by eons spent in cruel curls. You have to fight to keep your knees from pulling up and retreating into the bareness of your middle.

Dr. Drakken is a much faster eater than you are – having already consumed his cone, he now pats his stomach in satisfaction. While the ice cream was only vaguely solid, the cone itself is much more firmly affixed in its state of matter; it takes your inexperienced teeth, so much smaller than Drakken's, time to adjust to it. Drakken doesn't utter anything, be it a word or a hacked portion of one, but when you lean against him, you can feel the energy in him waving back and forth like kelp fronds.

When you glance toward the fountain, your powers draw in on themselves, as if they can somehow hide from their own existence. Tendrils of water sprinkle the effortless flow, creating only sparse ripples which are instantly whisked away by the forever motion of it. So delicate, so harmless.

Though your back arches more than you would like, you manage to lift your chin, assert it.

"Ahhh. Could this be any more beautiful?" Even speaking at a hush, Dr. Drakken easily traipses over the stillness. You don't mind.

"Yes," you say. On an impulse, with the fear left lagging behind, you swirl to face the fountain and you absorb the water's willingness. Your hands drop slowly to your sides, the water suspended inside you for a living, coursing instant, before they ascend and you begin to stir them, your fingertips folding in the manner of old scrolls. You push your longest finger down and lift your thumb, and the froth at the top of the fountain takes on definition, becomes two distinct figures: a human cradling the hand of a Gem and easing her into a dip uncolored by shame.

A birdlike sound comes from Dr. Drakken's throat, followed by a rather embarrassed chuckle. "Oh! Ah! Oh, I keep forgetting you can do that."

For some reason, this sounds like a compliment.

You watch Water Lapis and Water Drakken frolic for a bit longer as beside you, the true Drakken hums the bars of some Earth song through his closed mouth. A feeling of division flits across you, deeper and more genuine than your body itself. It is as though you have one foot planted on Earth , the other on Homeworld; one shoulder blade is strong and the other weak; one arm rushes forward to meet Drakken's zeal, while the other remains in Jasper's derisive grasp.

It's the feel of your gem not cracked…yet bruised, and you wish you could spit it out the way you did with the greasy pizza.

You do the next best thing – you stand up, your skirt filming in the mall's captive air, and rotate in the direction of the store that plunges jewelry into ears. "I think I'm ready to do something. But I need your help," you tell Drakken. "Will you come with me?"

He is already jogging beside you to keep up with your longer legs. "Lapis, you aren't going to go in and ask them…?"

"No, I'm not gonna ask them to pierce my ears," you say. Your wings are oddly lax inside you, warm with a sense of urgency. "There's something else I need to do."

Strange looks are exchanged when you and Dr. Drakken enter the jewelry shop. No one says anything, though, the atmosphere soundless and reverent as a temple as you creep toward the counter.

Atop it sits an object almost eclipsed by its own glare.

It is round, but not as round as Drakken's eyes grow. He shapes the words, _Are you sure?_ with his lips.

You nod; your vocal cords have melted away.

The mirror is edged in silver, you can see as you approach, smooth like a Pearl's gem, with no ridges or facets to get in the way. Its upward tilt is almost friendly as it brings the prisms of light it reflects up to you.

Centimeter by centimeter, you encroach on its territory, the ground nothing more than magma beneath you.

At last you are within its sight. You are not breathing; you haven't been breathing for some time now.

You are also not devoured.

With one hand cupped around the opposite, jerking elbow, you take a seat and catch the sight of your own face. Your cheeks are pinched, the tip of your nose almost white, and yet there is something about this Gem that contradicts those. If you didn't know it was you, you would say she looks brave.

You raise your left eyebrow, and your reflection raises its right. You take in a pointy chin and wide, firm blue eyes. You even open your mouth to examine the long dark tunnel of your throat, which feels thick and scrambled, as though it is actually a thing of substance rather than just for show.

This mirror is powerless, unworthy of the menace beating in your memory. It is nothing.

One last glimpse at yourself reveals a tic of a smile before you turn back to Dr. Drakken and widen your eyes. "You're right, dear," you say, planting a note of uppity concern in your voice. "In this light, I _do_ look blue."

The counter humans gape at each other, and you laugh so hard you fall off the stool.


	19. Chirp

**~At last I got this thing done and ready, and not a moment too soon! I can't be the only Lapis fan who needs a little pick-me-up about now. :( Hope this can help.**

 **Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. :)~**

Dr. Drakken hurries to type his weekly lab report, heedless of typos and misplaced commas. This is only his first draft, after all. He is enjoying the _klackity-klackity-klack_ of his fingers across the keys when another sound, a soft _dling_ , startles him with its announcement that he has a new e-mail message.

After taking a moment to settle his nervous system, Drakken opens the window and frowns at the subject line. _You have been tagged on Chirpsy_ , it says.

 _Chirpsy? I forgot I even had an account!_ It hasn't been used in – what – two, three years? He used to Chirp about his plans for world domination, although he found its character limit very stifling. Gave up entirely when Shego pointed out he had only one follower and it was Kim Possible.

Heart already dancing to a _something-is-different, something-is-wrong_ little ditty, Drakken clicks to see who has mentioned him. And stares.

 **Peridot5XG.**

The number means nothing to Drakken, but he only knows one person named Peridot.

How does she have a Chirpsy account? Come to think of it, how does she have Internet access at all in that barn?

 _DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN FIND DR. DRAKKEN?_ she asks.

Taking a breath so deep his lungs balloon, Drakken types back:

 _I'm here, Peridot. What's up?_

 **Peridot5XG:** _HAVE I SUMMONED YOU?_

 **DrDrakken:** _No, you tagged me._

 **Peridot5XG:** _"TAGGED"? DOES THAT MEAN YOU ARE "IT" NOW?_

 **DrDrakken:** _No, it just means I got an e-mail saying you used my name. Why were you looking for me?_

 **Peridot5XG:** _I THINK LAZULI NEEDS YOU._

 **DrDrakken:** _Why? Did something happen?_

 **Peridot5XG:** _I DON'T KNOW ALL THE DETAILS…_

 **DrDrakken:** _What happened?!_

 **Peridot5XG:** _JASPER._

 **DrDrakken:** _fdoigpdoigodpfgidpgimfksnxoir_

 **Peridot5XG:** _poakjfsklfmwoa_

 **Peridot5XG:** _WHAT ARE WE SAYING?_

 **DrDrakken:** _No, that was just me having a heart attack. Is Lapis okay?_

 **Peridot5XG:** _YEAH, SHE'S FINE. I CAN SEE HER FROM WHERE I AM NOW_

 **Peridot5XG:** _SHE'S STARING AT THINGS LIKE SHE THINKS SHE CAN MOVE THEM WITH HER MIND. WHCH SHE CAN'T, BUT I CAN. ISN'T THAT COOL?_

 **DrDrakken:** _Yes, that's very nice, Peridot…where is Jasper now?_

 **Peridot5XG:** _I DON'T KNOW. I GUESS LAZULI WATER-PUNCHED HER SUPER-HARD, AND SHE FLEW FAR AWAY._

 **Peridot5XG:** _HASHTAG GO LAZULI_

 **DrDrakken:** _I'll be right there._

 **Peridot5XG:** _WOW THANKS._

* * *

You stare at a flower, standing surprisingly firm despite the cooling of the breeze and the shifting colors in the leaves it stirs. It does not stir _you_ , despite your effort to make yourself care about it, about anything. All the emotion you possess surged out at Jasper, crested and billowed, then turned to vapors that blew away with her.

When Steven came to collect you from the barn earlier that morning, he promised he had a "surprise" for you. It turned out that Greg had _rented_ a boat, which is apparently like buying one, only it costs less money in exchange for having to return it after a time.

You looked out at all that water, knowing it would sink every ship in the harbor should you command it. It makes you cringe back from it, remembering how cruel and heavy it felt pressing against you – against _her_ and the gemstone on her back she was beginning to forget. You wanted nothing more to do with it.

Yet Steven was so happy, and he was so thoroughly convinced that you would enjoy yourself once you gave it a chance. You could not let him down, not when he has shown you this much unearned kindness.

For a while, you were able to fool yourself into forgetting. Steven loved it when you blew the boat horn; his laugh blew out with it, and you would giggle as well. Greg was so patient, so generous, offering you a turn with his pole as soon as watching him fish become boring. You managed to hook something, something large enough to be stronger than you, something you could not yank aboard even with Greg's and Steven's help.

Soon after that, the storm bullied its way in. In an instant, the ocean went from docile and puckish to violent, slamming its waves against the side of the boat, determined to have its own way, regardless of whose legs it had to break to get there. The boat's motor began to fail, which unnerved Greg. This, in turn, unnerved _you_ ; you are still unaccustomed to boats with motors.

The water turned a putrid grayish-green, almost the shade of Malachite. You stared out at it, remembering the heaviness, the chains, the souls twined together so tightly you could not tell where your anger ended and Jasper's began. Without it, you were too light; you might just drift away.

And then Jasper stormed aboard. Her eyes went through your physical form as easily as Rose Quartz's sword would, and it seemed only fitting that she should find you again, as though this is the way it was always meant to be.

Except for Steven. Steven was not supposed to be throwing himself in front of you, brandishing his shield; he should be far away from you, living the life he deserves. But there he was, face set and convinced he was protecting his innocent friend from the clutches of evil. You gazed into Jasper's eyes, haunted and mesmerized by the gleam within them, and you knew it was not that simple. It will never be that simple.

You can still hear Jasper now.

Laughing, a sound like a clump of wet sand striking the boat – _You're pointing that shield the wrong way, Rose. She's the one you should be afraid of._

Gushing – _I thought I was a brute, but you! You're a_ monster _!_

Pleading – _It'll be different this time. I've changed! You've changed me!_

You could have done it: restrained her again, vented the rage so unbecoming in a Lapis on a deserving target, relieved the Crystal Gems of the burden of caring for you. You could have.

But you didn't.

Jasper's burly form bounced off the wave, arms and legs wheeling in the thick stormy air. Not until the wood beneath you began to cave forward did you remember there had been a boat between your feet and your waves. You snatched up both Steven and Greg, whose only comment was, "I guess I bought a boat after all."

Once you returned to land, you set them down. Your wings retracted immediately, edgy as though they were littered with specks of sand.

Steven collapsed on the shore, his small chest heaving in and out. "Phew!" he gasped. "I think I speak for all of us when I say that was too close for comfort!"

His voice is so innocent with the truth that you cannot help smiling.

It is Greg, however, who you face. He has a winsome smile so much like Steven's and he had not treated you with any bitterness on behalf of his leg, yet you still felt shy when you turned to him. You forced your gaze to connect with his rather than with a point on the ruddy sphere of his scalp. "I'm sorry about your boat, Greg," you say.

Greg flung out a bewildered sort of chuckle. "Well, I'd rather lose the boat than the kid." His eyes grew serious, and he took your hands between both of his. His hands were much larger than the other two pairs you trust, but there was the same compassion in the grip, in the broad palms damp with sweat that suctioned them to yours. "Thank you, Lapis."

You are unsure how long he stood there, his leg firm and true and unyielding. Eventually Steven offered to accompany you back to the barn. You were about to agree to that when you heard something behind you, a whisper amidst the chaotic storm.

 _Lap-is, Lap-is, Lap-is_.

You turned back toward the ocean. The waves hurled themselves against the shore and reared back to charge again. They ached to come farther – you could feel it in your back – yet awaited your permission.

That was when you realized. The ocean does not hate you, does not fear you or judge you. It. . . misses you?

You walked over to it, your first steps toward it in many tides. With your wings fluttering inside your gem, you reached your biggest toe out and placed it among the waves. The water rushed forward, eager to submerge it, to treasure it and pay tribute to it.

"Someday," you whispered to the ocean. You could sense the sigh in its currents.

The wind beat your hair back and speckled salt on your lips, at odds with a fragile peace within you. Only when the barn was in sight, Peridot rushing toward you with a metal spoon in hand, chirping about how she managed to move it – only then did your shaking begin and numb you from the back inward.

You are still haunted; not by Jasper, but by Malachite, her fractured mind and her more serpentine quality, from the lean body to the quiet resolve with which she could wait for prey. Where did that come from? Certainly not ox-like Jasper.

Peridot hovers in the background, novel in her smallness and her concern; it almost hurts that you have nothing to give her in return. You have only a small amount of goodness left in you, and you are fairly certain your earlier deeds have used up today's supply. Your gem feels shapeless, and it is not hard to imagine tiny streams of granite fanning out from its edges, tainting the surrounding skin.

That is when Dr. Drakken walks up.

You would think him a hallucination had you ever been known to have a pleasant one: his skin a warm, welcoming blue, his eyebrow a soft smudge over dark eyes filmed with concern.

At the sight of you, his skitter speeds up. You startle and stare at him, letting your arms drop and your lower lip with them.

"What are you do –" you begin, and then you stop. "I mean – how did you know?"

Drakken's smile is uncharacteristically small and quiet, a firefly's wing. "A little bird told me," he says.

You trail his gaze over your shoulder to Peridot. Her triangular face, once so devoid of any emotion, now bubbles with both shyness and pride.

For the first time, you smile at her.

Only when Dr. Drakken sinks down beside you do you become aware of the ground where you are sitting. Before, it was vacant beneath you, as undefined as the realm of regeneration. Yet now you can feel the shoots of grass that remind you of Drakken's hair spiking gently between your fingers, the soil accepting the weight of your toes.

Drakken's hands begin to mimic the orbit of a double planet. "You want to talk about it yet?" he says.

"No." Although a shudder vibrates inside your gem, your body doesn't move.

Drakken nods and keeps nodding, so many times that you lose track. "Should we go get ice cream?"

"Yes," you say.

You fly Drakken back to the boardwalk and the ice cream shop. He is not much of a load, especially when the air is no longer laden with unspent rain and danger. He orders his usual chocolate concoction. You order vanilla; you _need_ vanilla, and Drakken does not ask you about other flavors this time.

Licking your ice cream, the two of you journey to a shale-brick wall where you settle, away from the ocean you are not yet ready to face. The salt breeze nudging your back is reminder enough. The taste of all that can be good about Earth occupies the space where the bitter iron coating of fear sat moments ago.

Drakken's feet swing back and forth. He breathes, involuntary little huffs of heat. You allow your legs to stretch, to slide across the rough texture and value its grit.

A drop of ice cream teeters at the rim of the sugar cone. You quickly transfer it to your other hand and thrust your tongue beneath just in time for the drop to splash sweetly on your tastebuds. To your own surprise, you giggle.

But when you glance up at Dr. Drakken, he is not giggling with you. A storm blusters across him, faster even than the ones at sea that can scud in on a moment's notice. A wave of discomfort, unrealized until now, breaks somewhere near your hand, below the surface.

Drakken sets his cone down on the flat ridge between you, seemingly so he can examine you more closely. You follow his gaze and the pain, and you discover the vicious purple mark on your wrist, seared into the shape of five brawny fingers.

There is nothing you can say to him.

Drakken clasps your forearm and rotates it toward him. His grip has a caution you might have once mistaken for weakness; now, you are simply grateful that it does not lay claim to you. "Lapis…did she touch you?" he says.

Your head immobile, you are forced to speak. "She grabbed me," you admit.

The color deserts Drakken's face even as you watch, deepening the black mess of his scar. A thread jumps in the front of his neck, pulsing like cricket-song.

He has told you he was once a supervillain, that in his life he has done terrible things. You accepted it as truth. Yet it is not until then that you truly believe he's capable of hurting someone.

"She _bruised_ you." Drakken's voice is a groan, as though punched from him by Jasper's own fist.

You can feel the breaks inside your wrist now, the snapped ends, the cold leaks. You squirm on the wall, taking in another large mouthful of ice cream. "She didn't mean to," you say.

Drakken's glare is almost blotted out by the thick tears layered over it. His chin quavers. You cannot bear to see him this way.

You pick up his cone and hand it to him. "Drakken, it's okay," you say.

Drakken's hands spasm out from his sides. "No, it's _not_ okay!"

"Well, it will be." Closing your eyes, you press the fingers of your other hand onto your wrist, your wince invisible as you make contact. You concentrate on stitching the blood vessels back together again, erasing what has spilled, until the bruise vanishes and takes the dulled throbbing in your wrist with it.

You open your eyes and offer Dr. Drakken a fluctuating smile. "See?"

Drakken throws his face into the pouch formed where his lab coat billows between his legs. "That's not what I _meant_ , Lapis," he says.

"Oh," you say, even though you think you already knew that.

Drakken's hands delve into his grass-blade hair, shaking as if they have somehow stolen your pain and kept it for themselves. "Why – why did she grab you?"

"She wanted us to fuse again," you say. The wire-muscled fusion you orchestrated slinks into your mind once again. You already rejected her once today. Will you have to keep rejecting her, over and over, for the rest of your infinite lifespan?

The breeze grows colder, snapping leaves from trees as it passes. For an instant, you wish for Homeworld's wind, never too hot and never too chilly, and Homeworld's cloudless sky.

Drakken exhales something – it could be either an oath or that praying thing. It is as organic as his heartbeat. Next to him, you feel artificial.

After several frigid moments, Drakken draws his own knees upward. His ice cream is turning to pulp beside him, yet he doesn't appear to care. "And that's when you water-punched her?" he says.

There is not a seam of doubt in his expression. It carves the spot where your bruise once was, an Injector penetrating the planet's mantle. You take a greater distance and turn your back on Dr. Drakken. For perhaps the first time in your friendship, you are too ashamed to meet his eyes.

"Lapis?" There is no buoyancy to Drakken's words anymore. They run with sadness and sympathy. You feel the warmth of his fingers as they near yours, hopping up and down one brick over. "What – what's this about?"

You look up at the sun, peering bravely between two puffy banks of clouds, though it doesn't matter. All you can see in anything, sun or cloud or sea behind you, is Jasper's sneer, jamming your gem the same way pizza grease once overwhelmed your mouth. It was, somehow, even heavier today, bent with something beyond her battle fervor.

Some sort of… _wanting_.

"Lapis?" Drakken repeats. The buoys rustle with concern, and you can imagine the hurt that will light between them when he hears the truth.

You put your face in your hands. "No, it wasn't. I thought about it. About fusing again."

The silence that follows is unnatural. You are struck with the distinct sensation that you are in the center of a hurricane, momentarily shielded from the hoarse shrieking of its winds, but knowing all along that the worst is yet to come.

Yet when Drakken finally answers, you have never heard him speak more quietly. " _What_? Lapis – _why_?" There is no tightness now; his words sag, helpless.

He deserves so much more than a shrug. That is the only reason you clench your wrists around your knees and plunge into a depth of yourself you haven't before attempted to fathom. "We were fused for such a long time that she became a part of me. When we were broken apart," you say, "it felt like I was missing half of myself."

You remember the box-games sitting in front of Steven's favorite shop. Drakken showed you one where metal balls are launched into a surrealistic landscape, directed to crash into unidentified objects, and eventually they will fall back into the cavern-bottom of the machine when the player fails. Another ball will be triggered, unless you have reached the machine's limit. And, without Jasper, that is what you were: that last ball left knocking around in a zone too large to occupy alone.

"And I'm so _angry_ all the time now," you continue. "I don't know what to do with it – I was never supposed to feel it – and Steven and the Crystal Gems are all too nice to understand. Even _Peridot_ is nicer than I am now!"

Drakken snaps a small noise of disagreement. It reaches you as though from afar, as though you are still down there: marooned in a trench, wrapped in chains of your own design, surrendered to a cold you had never known existed. The fact that you came so close to resuming that position has a presence of its own, brutal and unsatisfied, more intimidating than Jasper herself.

"But Jasper – she knew what it was like to be angry." Your voice is stagnant water, spoiled and without motion. "And when I was with her, I could at least _use_ my anger in a way that kept everyone else safe. We'd started to understand each other, and she said this time it would be better. She wouldn't fight me, so I wouldn't have to hold her down. There wouldn't be that struggle for control this time…things were different now."

From somewhere deep in his throat, Dr. Drakken begins to count curious numbers: "One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four…"

You watch one of Earth's small insects peddle her many legs at the base of the wall, her body encased in glossed, black plates of armor. "And even if it wasn't, we kind of deserved each other."

Dr. Drakken's jaw is working; you can hear it clack up and down behind you.

The insect disappears into a crack in the brick, and your eyes remain frozen on that spot, afraid to roam. "But most of all…I knew how to _be_ with Jasper. In a way I don't know how to be with any other Gem. I knew her rules. We were inside each other for so long, and now that we're apart, I'm alone in myself and I don't know what to do with it.

"Is that ever a thing that happens?" you pose. "Is it normal to want to stay with a person you understand, even if they'll never be good to you?"

There is a heavy pause. You can tell Drakken is being careful not to scorn your lack of discernment, an approach that makes you feel more a refugee than ever. His next words are faultlessly crafted, and they thrum along like the engine of a modern battleship. "What you're describing sounds like an _abusive relationship_ , which is characterized by one party harming the other at regular intervals, often by exerting power over them. Typically, the abuser will attempt to convince the abused that they deserve to be treated in such a fashion, and the abused will feel trapped in the relationship even if they have not been explicitly threate –"

"I know you're reading that off somewhere," you say without turning around.

An embarrassed chuckle rises from near your shoulder. You glance back in time to see Drakken folding his phone shut, sticking it behind his back, and giving you a large, tooth-laden grin. "Yes, well, be that as it may…." He coughs in that manner that has nothing to do with sickness and threads his fingers through the air. "It's true. It's a thing that happens. After a long time, you can get attached to someone, no matter what they've done to you. And if you don't know where else to go…"

You tilt your head to one side. The sight seems to crack Drakken's smile; his tongue splits it the down the middle, the ends falling. "That's kind of how it was with me and Shego. Not exactly, of course, but…she did some really awful things to me when she was upset. A lot of times I didn't know what would upset her until she had me suspended in midair, getting ready to throw me."

"She gave you a black eye," you recall. The memory of the dark puffy flesh around Steven's eye curls inside your hollow parts and weights them, cutting them off from your wings.

"More than once," Drakken says with a nod. "I knew that she was being mean to me, but I had no idea how to function without her. So I stayed and I kept her employed and I hoped that things would get better, because the thought of trying to survive on my own was scarier than the thought of her temper!"

He places a hand near yours again, its pose tender through the black gloves. What he has described resounds with familiarity. Inside your gem, it mixes with the rasp in someone else's heated demands: _"Lapis! Fuse with me! Fuse with me again! When we were Malachite, we were stronger than either one of us is alone! Please, Lapis!" –_ the word "please" as foreign on her lips as your gossamer skirt would be on her warrior's frame.

"But you and Shego are still friends," you say. You picture Shego's angled face and the wily Emerald eyes that let everything in and nothing out, and even with her trickery she does not belong in Jasper's class.

"Yes, we are." A bittersweet smile tinges Drakken's reply. "I was lucky. Shego really _did_ change. She didn't waste time standing around _telling_ me she'd changed – she just _showed_ it. And, to be fair, there were, err, just a couple of things _I_ needed to change to help us out, too." You feel his hand slip closer to yours; even the speckles of ice cream on it cannot make it as cold as Jasper's is. "But, Lapis, if it's straight-up abuse, you can't change the person. Because the problem is with _them_."

You tighten your eyes shut. _Abuse_ seems the proper word for the rough way Jasper tore your wings from your gem, the way she bent and mangled your powers to her will. Yet Malachite's reflection is kept in a different storage unit than all others, where it is not so much stored as embedded: long-legged and torn, face a dark grin you can't remember which one of you designed for her.

"Jasper said I'd changed her," you repeat. You hear the slender quiver in your voice as you open your eyes. "And I wondered if that were really true. I guess that was stupid of me."

"To think someone could change from knowing you?" Dr. Drakken's gentle tone touches each ember of Jasper left inside you, extinguishing it. "I've heard stupider things. But people who have changed don't body-slam you." He blinks. "I mean, unless you're about to be hit by a truck or something."

You shake your head. "I wasn't. We were on a boat."

Drakken drops a look to the area on your wrist that was bruised earlier. He scoots forward closer, and his hands work at the air, a series of flickers and clasps that appear to help forge his next words. "Now, Jasper might be redeemable. But you aren't going to help her any by fusing with her again. That'd only reinforce her belief that she gets what she wants when she does this." He glances to the right. "Which – yes, I was quoting that last bit, but it's also true!"

With every drop in the ocean, you hope it is.

The breeze is lighter now, homier, the salt on it eager to reconnect with you. It sets Drakken's tied-back hair to romping playfully around his head and steals the Diamond-hardness you saw on him before. His expression puckers like a fingerprint.

"I wish I had been there to help you," he says.

You remember the stinging wind as it pushed you toward Jasper, awaiting the moment when you would keel as so many ships have. "But you were," you say.

Drakken frowns. "I don't recall that."

"I mean, you weren't _really_ there," you say. "But your words were. I remembered what you said about letting go of – of hate for people because you don't want to be like them. I knew if I gave in to that, I'd be just like Jasper."

A muffled squeal ekes from Drakken's throat.

"So I looked her right in the eye" – you hike your chin to demonstrate, though Drakken's height is hardly comparable to Jasper's – "and I told her no. I said that what we had wasn't healthy. That I never wanted to feel the way I'd felt with her again, _ever_."

Drakken scoops what survives of his cone back into his grip and laps happily at it. "So you refused," he says, and a grunt charges into the sentence before it's even completed. "I mean – no, bad choice of words! Obviously, you didn't re-fuse. In fact, you refused to re-fuse. Or – well – anyway – you told her no!"

His bumbling voice empowers yours to stay whole when you say, "And that's when she grabbed me."

You glance down at your wrist, too, and then quickly away. You cannot dwell on icy fingers closing around it, a strength that far exceeds your own propelling you backward, or the hard intent on her face as she rushed you forward again. The details of what Jasper was doing, what she was _trying_ to do, are unclear, not to be spoken of, unprecedented. Not even the Crystal Gems, who fuse and stay fused so needlessly, have ever approached fusion with their fists readied.

Drakken grumbles under his breath.

"Steven came running at her, though. He yelled, 'She said _no_!' and he knocked her away with his shield," you continue.

"Oh, thank you, Steven," Drakken says, as if there is any chance Steven can hear him from this distance.

"Then Jasper decided this whole thing was Steven's fault. She said she would shatter him." You grip the sides of the brick until a flake peels between your fingers.

Drakken swallows his last bite of ice cream. "And _that_ 's when you water-punched her?" he says with complete confidence.

"Yeah, that's when I water-punched her." The smallest of smiles balances on your lips.

"Ah!" Drakken's fingers snap. "Love that smile! It's like…something…good…"

You know what _his_ smile is, though. It is the sun, peeking from behind the clouds it is about to scatter away so it can spangle your sea, make it shine again.

Drakken leans his head to one side and studies you, his hands wrapped and tucked into the hollows beneath his elbows. "Can I just say again how proud of you I am?"

Now you blink at him. "You just did."

Deep down, however, you are not sure he should be proud of you at all. You were limp and weak when you rebuffed Jasper. The strength in your gem came not from the army of water surrounding you that you were too afraid to touch, but from an ice cream cone like this one, from the beauty of an orange leaf and from the shock of Rose Quartz's infamous shield drawn to protect you.

You pause for a moment and hear the perky voice that seems to come directly through Peridot's nose, see her clumsy attempts at empathy, sense the earnestness that peaks like the triangle rise of her hair. "It was really nice of Peridot to contact you," you say quietly.

Dr. Drakken's face warms. "Now, Peridot – I think she's the real deal. She really _has_ changed." His tongue trips over his lips, collecting the last few speckles of ice cream. "I know she's not very good at it, but she does care about you."

For a few Earth-seconds, you are assaulted by images of Peridot – now that she isn't shuttered away behind her screen, all of her expressions are open and quick, like the bare wiring of her ship exposed when its panels fell. She has passed through an estuary, a place where the tide meets the river current, where you still flail. It is a difficult thing to harbor a grudge against someone who acts as though the stars shine on your behalf, a difficult thing on which you cannot afford to waste any more effort.

Your shoulders lift. "She's not that bad compared to Jasper."

Drakken's legs shudder, the scrape of one boot against the shale disturbingly similar to the sound of Jasper's plea. " _Nobody's_ that bad compared to Jasper."

While he does not intend to swing his words at you like a whip, a lash that can be attributed to poor aim still stings. You are strong enough to remain turned toward Drakken. For a moment, though, you can't keep your head up, and you glance briefly at your lap.

His eyes snatch it up right away. "Uh-oh," he says, his sigh more flustered than truly impatient. "What did I say now?"

You move your glance to the plants again, the slender stalks with the bristled tops. They are no longer foreign specimens to you; there is a certain safety and friendliness to them, knowing Dr. Drakken's connection with them. You pretend it is them you are telling when you say, "Jasper called me a monster."

Drakken does the last thing you would expect him to do: He laughs, five surprised spurts, saliva taking flight to rain down on the plants. You don't see how he can possibly meet what you just said with laughter – even laughter than rings with a Sapphire's freezing breath.

" _Jasper_ called… _you_ … a monster?" Drakken tilts his head to one side, the hang of his hair even and flat in questioning. "Was she joking?"

"I don't think Jasper knows _how_ to joke," you say. In the depths of your gem, you seize your physical form and draw it inward so it will not sway, it will not buck under the end of the storm.

"No, she probably doesn't, the big sourpuss," Drakken says. His soft jaw is clenched as tightly as a clam's mouth. "It's just so…ridiculous. What does Jasper know?"

"Everything."

You feel your lower lip shiver. It is the only thing on your body not locked into place.

"Say wha?" Drakken's eyes are identical moons, his eyebrow floating above them as though unencumbered by gravity.

"We were _fused_ ," you remind him. "Jasper could read my thoughts. She could feel my feelings. She could see – everything. I _gave_ her everything. And she looked at all of it…and decided I was a monster."

Your voice breaks, squeezed into powder by Jasper's grip, and yet you are not anywhere close to tears. Perhaps it would be less concerning if you were. Instead, your insides form a profound trench, and even you, a Gem Purposed for curiosity, does not want to know how deep it reaches.

Drakken's cracked cheek bunches until it brushes his lower eyelid, and he makes the most pitiful noise you have ever heard from him: an airy whimper scampering for an escape. "Oh – Lapis – that's awful. I – gee – can I hug you?"

His long arms unfold and wade hopefully toward yours. As soon as you nod, they encircle you, padded with fabric and cozy with a body heat you will never produce. It does not take away the trench, but it grounds it, gives it a floor, proving it is not boundless after all. He holds you close; you can feel the rods that walk his chest down to his stomach – you think they might be called "ribs."

"Thanks," you say into his coat of labs.

You feel Dr. Drakken nod. "Would you like me to spend the night here?" he asks. "I mean, not _here_ , but back at the barn with you?"

Peace laps at the edges of your gem, carrying away the numbness. You pull back and knock a hand against a sugared cone you had forgotten was there. A milky liquid, still rife with the scent of happier times, runs over its brim, and you rediscover the weightlessness of a giggle.

"Sure," you say. You pick up the cone and give him a casual glance from over the melted cream. "I mean, if you're okay with that, it'd be great."

Drakken breathes out so heavily that you see his chest shrink. "All righty, then," he says, fingers panning behind him until he finds his phone. "Let me just call Mother so she won't worry and Dr. Director so she'll know I'll be a little late for work tomorrow."

You take a slurp of the white cream. Lukewarm against your tastebuds, it glides down your throat, kindly accommodating the lump still hovering there. "Okay," you say.

Drakken straightens noisily, flips open his phone, and begins pecking the buttons. Its ringing is dull, as though underwater, still several eons removed from a Wailing Stone's shriek. Soon Drakken chirps, "Dr. Director! Hello!"

He turns away from you ever so slightly. You stare down at your fingerprints, the whorls and spirals subtly grafted into your skin, and begin to phase into the realization that you did not sacrifice them to Jasper this time.

Drakken bubbles things such as, "…will be a little late coming in to work tomorrow…" and "Oh, thank you for understanding."

The storm has died down, yet water vapor remains heavy in the air. It presses against your skin, offering its congratulations. You don't feel the sigh building in you; you only feel the moment it is freed.

Dr. Drakken's voice has shifted now. The proper, professional inflection is gone. This is a wheedling voice, the kind in which Zirconium lawyers address Diamonds.

It's Mama Lipsky on the other end this time. You hear her shrillness from the phone, and you picture her swab of hair, her hands like small cushions. This picture has scarcely taken form in your head before Drakken's words tear through, a tousled line of buoys about to be uprooted from its supports:

"…left a _bruise_ on her! You should have seen it, Mother!"

There is a dense silence before Mama Lipsky speaks again. "If I _ever_ get my hands on the woman who did that to my daughter…" she shrieks.

It is as if a sluice has opened in your gem, allowing the tension to drain away and the knotted wings to untangle.

The final bite of your cone crunches between your teeth. Soon afterward, Drakken returns – he skitters up to you so quickly that he forfeits his balance and wheels crazily on one foot. You rush over, grab one of the churning arms, and plant your bare feet to steady him.

"Errr. Yes. Many thanks." Drakken gives a chuckle that reminds you of an embarrassed seal. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah," you respond instinctively, adding "All things considered," when a scowl threatens on Drakken's brow. You give your head a jerk, snapping away the droplets of ice cream that didn't make it to your mouth. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'll be all right." Drakken brackets his hands in the air on either side of you – protecting you, you have no doubt he thinks. He peers into the face between them. "Lapis…you're not a monster. Not even close. That was just one more lie Jasper told you to get you to fuse again."

In your mind, he takes Jasper's words and begins to strip them of their vitality, the way you used to help strip planets of theirs. Within moments, they are barren and the parings lie at the base in a pile of ash.

The huff Dr. Drakken releases does not scatter them, however. You suspect you are the only one with the authority to do that.

And you have not had much success with authority.

The thought is suddenly wearisome, and you let your head rest on Drakken's arm. "Can we go back to the barn?" you ask in as bright a tone as you can manage. "Steven said he'd come by and check on me later, and I don't want him to worry."

Drakken's eyes are also heavy with water vapor. He loosens the arm from under you so he can loop it around your shoulders and cup you to his side. "Then to the barn we shall go!" he proclaims.

Steven is already there when you return, his chubby legs crossed in front of him as Peridot bounces around him, blathering about _Camp Pining Hearts_ , that television show she loves so much. At the sight of you, he holds up a hand to her and comes running toward you.

"Lapis!" Steven cries. He throws his arms around you; they meet with ease behind your back.

Your waist clenches beneath his embrace. War and imprisonment have robbed you of your experience with hugs, and you have yet to shake the wariness that comes from the touch of others. Yet now you are content to hug Steven back, to lean over him and breathe in his smell – that kelp-like scent humans give off when it is warm out and the tangy smell that must come from his _shampoo_. His warm fingers against your uncovered midriff is every bit as striking as his black curls against the antiquated red of the barn.

"Hi, Steven. It's good to see you again," you say, with a laugh that does not need to be faked. "After – what? Four whole hours without you?"

Steven pulls back to examine your face. "How are you doing?" he says.

"Fine," you say.

Steven's nod is pensive. He cranes his neck around and looks at Drakken. "How is she really?" he says.

"A little shaken up." Drakken's fingertips knock at one another. "A lot in need of a pep talk. I almost wish Kim Possible were here – she'd organize you a whole pep _rally_!" This last comment is directed to you.

"Is it because Jasper –" Steven begins.

" – called her a monster?" Drakken finishes for him. "Yes."

In spite of everything, the edges of your lips creep upward. "Guys, I'm _right here_!"

"Sorry, Lapis." Steven immediately refolds into the position, leaning over his intersected ankles to slap the grass beside him. "C'mon, sit down. If you want."

There is such an allowance in his voice that you sink down immediately. Your legs are significantly longer than Steven's and poke out at harried angles when you attempt to arrange them in the same pose.

"Would'ja take a look at that rainbow?" Steven makes a clicking sound with his tongue, as though he is one of Homeworld's great thinkers. "You did it again, sky."

You giggle and follow the point of his finger upward. It's only the second rainbow you've seen, and you are left awestruck once more that such beauty can be wrung out of Earth's unimpressive atmosphere by cold, almost painful, drops of rain. The colors are even more vivid this time, the red atop nearly blending with the changing leaves, the purple below saturated with water like a flower newly washed.

"Orange and blue are different colors," you say out loud.

Drakken squirms as he, too, drops to the grass. "Of course you remember all the _stupid_ things I say, too…"

You shake your head at him. "It actually helps a little."

"Not stupid if it helps," Steven chimes in.

Sunlight spreads from Drakken's expression once again. He rubs his gloved fingers against his coat of labs as if polishing them. "Well, in _that_ case, I'll go ahead and add that orange and blue aren't just different. They're complete _opposites_ on the color wheel!"

 _Color Wheel._ You have never heard of such an artifact – it must belong to an ancient culture the scouting Gems never encountered – yet you are in this moment grateful that it gives humans a notion of difference, however fabricated, between you and Jasper.

Steven sits up and leans forward, squinting his bright eyes at you. The confusion within only serves to burnish them further. "What I don't get," he says, "is why you'd listen to what Jasper says in the first place. I mean, no offense to her, but she usually doesn't know what she's talking about."

The look he gives you is as pure as the light of a new star, reaching toward you in complete faith that yours will match it. His words attach to Drakken's in near perfection; they require no dance to combine.

"Because of our fusion, Steven," you say. Your words are a level platform, suspended by cords of tension in the corners. "Jasper – Jasper was inside me in a way no one else has ever been before. There's no hiding from someone when you're fused. They see into every little crack and cave that's there in your soul. She called me a monster _after_ she'd looked into me for so many tides."

"That's not true," Steven says.

His proclamation is solemn. A curt type of pride swims through your gem, though you know better than to trust it. "Of course you'd say that, Steven," you say. "And it's really sweet of you –"

"No, I mean it's not true that Jasper's the only one who's been inside you," Steven says. "There was this time that I talked to you. In a dream. When you were – when you were –"

"When I was her," you finish for him. "I think…I think I might remember that." It is hard to retrieve the reflection, for not everything Malachite saw and heard was real. When someone called your name down there in the deep – not hers, but yours – you planted her feet in the mire and waited for it to pass.

That was when Steven appeared: Somehow breathing as though bubbled and safe, he was the first sweetness, the first light, you had seen in so long, and to keep him that way, you had to turn away from him. When he spoke, it resonated through the gem on her back, not the one on her nose, his cries of your name curtaining Jasper's presence.

"You and I," you say. "We – we –"

"Yeah, I don't know if there's a Gem-word for that," Steven says cheerily. "But we connected, and I saw inside you, too."

Even now, your wings shiver, and you slip marginally away from him. There are so many things he could see – hatred, cowardice, selfishness, the last few shreds of entitlement.

"I did see some things I didn't like very much." Steven wedges stumpy fingertips together. "But mostly that just made me really sad for you."

"Why?" you ask.

"Be-cau-uuse – you're my friend!" Steven wails as though in exasperation. "But I saw other stuff, too. I saw how much you cared about me and how bad you wanted to protect me, and how hard you were trying to do the right thing if you could only figure out what it was." Steven gives you the kind of close, knowing look you thought only existed in the fusionscape. "That was the biggest thing about you."

Steven's eyes, those starry black eyes that meet yours without a shard of dishonesty, begin to mist over. He cannot lie, not even with his gestures, and neither can Dr. Drakken. Quartzes are blunt and battering, not ones for subterfuge, yet Jasper wielded the truth clumsily, the way one would a burrowed weapon she has never been trained to use.

With that, Steven builds up a sandbar that even your waves cannot overcome. They are blown backward, softening and loosening the granite that you felt setting around your gem.

You glance back at Drakken. He has been abnormally quiet for the last several moments, his hands fidgeting in his lap. His shoulders float up self-consciously when he sees you looking at him. "Wow. . . that's a whole lot more beautiful than anything I came up with," Drakken says. "I was just going to say that Jasper should mind her own beeswax."

Ever so slightly, you smile.

"Helium!" Drakken exclaims.

You tilt your head at him. "What _about_ helium?" Your knowledge of helium centers around it constituting half of the last atmosphere Homeworld shattered before turning its attention to Earth. You peer up at the rainbow, its rich colors lightening as the air dries, until the memory smears away.

"Your smile works like _helium_!" Drakken declares. "In that it turns everything light enough to float away, not that it makes my voice squeaky, although sometimes –" He coughs to clean his throat, one fist pressed to its bump – "it does that too."

Steven throws his arms around your waist and loops his head under your arm. "We love you, Lapis!" he says. "I do. . . Drakken does. . . Peridot does. . ."

You feel your expression twisting as you glance toward Drakken, and his chuckle confirms it. "Figure THAT one out, right?" he says, in a tone every bit as merry as Steven's.

Neither one of them looks at you as if you are just one step up from corruption. You know that if you were to peek around the barn, you would see nothing of the sort on Peridot's face either. It is so odd, and yet you no longer doubt that this smaller adaptation of the cold, callous Peridot you knew has come to care for you.

Drakken plays with the thornlike ends of his hair. "Believe me, Lapis, I know what evil is. I've seen it right up close and personal: in my coworkers, in my rivals, in my mir – in myself. I don't see it in you. Even though you have all the right ingredients, which makes it even more impressive. No matter how much you hate Jasper, you didn't choose hate today." He raises his hand, fingers in sharp sticks, and you blink at it for only an instant before realizing he wants to high-five and clapping your palm triumphantly to his. "You keep doing that, and you'll never be a monster."

You close your eyes briefly and let your elbows descend to your knees. Jasper's brazen words haven't been muted yet, but they have been reduced to a muffled cacophony, no more than the harsh caw of shorebirds desperately seeking a meal.

Steven gives your other hand a squeeze. At the merciful touch of your first true friend, the first bridge between your disparate worlds, your insides are no longer a yawning cavern. They link to a gem where the perimeters are once again definite, where your wings are content to reside. The mandate to distance yourself from him grows colder and more foreign than even the worst of Earth's weather has ever been.

"Thank you," you whisper. The rainbow has nearly faded from view by now, and you nod at Dr. Drakken. "Is it okay if I talk to Steven for a while? Just the two of us? I want to spend some time with him before it gets dark and he gets tired."

You are still somewhat amazed by the fact that human bodies synchronize so naturally with the Earth's axis. Blue Diamond scoffed at it, calling it a weakness, but for a race that needs sleep to function, it seems rather advantageous to you.

Drakken's upper lip unrolls to huddle with the lower. "Sure, I guess. You still want me to stay the night?"

You nod again and fix your eyes on Steven. Kindness swoops straight from his fingerprints into yours. With one swift internal jerk, you shapeshift a heart so that you can feel in your chest what Steven feels in his.

Drakken skids off across wet grass into the barn, where you know Peridot still plays with her spoon; you hear her squeal of delight when he walks in. Her voice still has the sound of sword hitting shield, and yet her hue is one that keeps yours and Jasper's apart in the rainbow above.

Steven settles back, his legs sticking out straight, the pink folds of him still radiant with sweat and seawater. He holds the silence for a moment, cradles it with affection, before he says, "You know, I think my dad really likes you."

Your shapeshifted heart fades away. There is still so much for which you must atone. "Really?" you say. "Even after his leg and everything?"

No matter how sharply you turn your head, the images insist on coming ashore as they always have: the van bearing down upon you, grotesque gray in your silvered vision; the furious wave that threw it skyward; the groan of the door as it opened and Greg spilled out, his face taut and shrunken with pain.

 _Your fault._ Even as nothing more than outlines, Jasper's words have spined, dangerous corners.

"Yeah. It wasn't broken for very long anyway." Steven speaks with such loud deliberation, as if he perceives the words too and knows he must drown them out. "I fixed him right on up, if you know what I mean." His tongue protrudes through his grin, and he points to it. "And even if I hadn't, I think he'd have forgiven you. I mean, he forgave Peridot for throwing him off the roof."

"She threw him off the _roof_?" you say, feeling your jaw dangle. " _Why_?"

"I think she wanted to see if he could fly," Steven says. "But we talked to her about that, and now she knows that's not how we do things."

Your drop your head into your lap and release your first genuine piece of laughter since Greg's fish-capturing pole was yanked from your hands. On Homeworld, Blue Diamond or one of her Agates would have scolded you for impertinence, and you wonder just how freely you ever lived. Beside you, Steven becomes a fountain of giggles.

"Did you heal him from that, too?" you ask.

"Didn't need to," Steven says. "Garnet showed up and caught him."

"Hooray for Garnet," you catch yourself saying, with only a thin measure of sarcasm. While you are not sure if you will ever fully trust her, at this moment you are grateful for the teaming of Sapphire's foresight and Ruby's quick instincts. You do not wish any more pain on Greg.

"So, yeah, Dad forgave you," Steven says with a shrug. "It helps that you saved my life a ton. He tends to like people who do that."

The very light of which you are comprised slumps. Greg's planet hasn't completed a full cycle around the sun since the night you cracked his leg, and he has already forgiven you. You, however, have had several thousand years of opportunity, and you just took the first step toward forgiveness today.

You pick up one of the leaves that today's storm has spirited to the ground and twirl it between your fingers. It doesn't have the stunning orange of your leaf, like a sky alive with sunset just before nightfall, nor the contrast in the Peridot-green threads that travel through it, but its texture is crisp and calming in your clutch. "I wish I were as good at forgiving as he is," you venture to Steven.

Steven edges closer."You'll get there. In the meantime, you're better at flying. Like Peridot found out, am I right?" He makes a clumsy attempt at a wink that leaves one eye looking sluggish and bruised.

Every sly look you have ever seen is parodied on his face. Your smile doesn't need to be mustered.

You nudge your feet below the grass, into the soil turned soft and pliable by the rain. "He didn't seem mad about the boat," you say.

"Nah, he wasn't." Steven spreads himself flat on his back, hands locked together behind his head. "Dad doesn't worry much about that stuff. Especially not since he's a millionaire now."

"What does he have a million of?" you say. It's certainly not boats – Beach City's harbor couldn't hold a fleet that size.

"Dollars!" Steven exclaims. "Dollars are what you use to buy stuff. And he has _five_ million of them, to be exact. Well, not _exact_ , 'cause he's already spent a few of them."

You frown. A conversation you had with Drakken at his mall – in a pocket-store surprisingly cool and moist despite the white burn of its walls – soars through your recall. "I thought _money_ was what you used to buy stuff."

"It is!" Steven's head seems to bounce on his shoulders. "Dollars are the _type_ of money used around here. Some other places use different kinds of money, but it's all money. Kind of like how all Gems are Gems, but they come in Ruby and Pearl and –" he pokes you gently with his elbow – "Lapis."

Dirt sifts between your toes. You think back to the stiff, uncompromising ground on Homeworld, scored and punctured with emergence holes now crusted with age. Your beautiful, beautiful home, and even the land itself did not deign to welcome you back –

You paddle away from that particular wave. For now, you are simply happy to be here with Steven, your friend in spite of all you've done, and listen to his wonderful explanations of Earth life. Nearly all things make sense when they come out of his mouth, and the few that don't can drift right back out with the tide. Even Peridot's gleeful babble is pleasant, at least when it is interspersed with exclamations from Drakken.

"Yeah, Dad struck it rich a little while ago," Steven says as you uncurl your legs and lie down next to him. "Turns out he'd written this song before I was even born – "

In the course of the story Steven tells, the rainbow ebbs away and the sky begins to darken. He interrupts himself at various points to describe what a _commercial_ is – "Like a really short movie that's trying to convince you to buy something" – and a _check_ – "That's a special piece of paper that you use for money. _You_ get to decide how much it's worth. You can write any number you want on it, but they're gonna hold you responsible for paying it, so don't write any more than you have, or you could get in big trouble."

He has just finished regaling you with the definition of a _bank_ – apparently a zoo of sorts, where the money-cages are only accessible through the codes and scanning systems humans are still busy discovering – when Dr. Drakken wanders back out from the barn and approaches you. "You holding up okay?" he asks.

You are not holding up anything except yourself, and the compassion in his eyes makes it clear this is what he was referencing. "Yeah."

Drakken's long stalk of a body plunks down beside you, humanity in all its inconveniences and vulnerabilities and dearth of coordination. Your other companion, the unprecedented hybrid who embodies the finest qualities of both species, rustles grass as he stirs. Jasper might be Homeworld's most refined warrior, but she will never be superior to either of them.

"Do you think we'll be seeing Jasper again?" Drakken says to Steven. His lips roll back the way they did before his body kicked his food up again.

Steven frowns – a thing that falls so rarely between those substantial cheeks, it is as though it takes all of his shapeshifting energy to conjure it. "I hope not," he says. "Besides, Lapis hit her so good, it might've even blasted her right back into space."

His admiration is as clean as Jasper's was ravenous. You bow your head, your hair flitting across your face. "Well, probably not _that_ good," you mutter.

You are back on the boat, hidden in Jasper's darkness as she towers above you; you are lifted and unchained by the only thing that can be stronger than your fear and anger. The gleam in her eyes was like the gleam of grease on the pizza, as if she still has a hand inside your Gem rooting around, and you knew that if you were to submerge yourself in Malachite's waters, you would never emerge from them again.

Jasper will be back, you know. From the moment they begin to absorb a planet's life-force, Quartz warriors are constructed to be untiring soldiers – "beasts of war," as Holly Blue Agate derisively referred to them, and you squirm to think you probably nodded with her – soldiers who will not back down until their every goal is accomplished. As the only Gem from her Kindergarten not to emerge malformed, Jasper feels that pressure even more acutely than most, and she will follow that pressure unless given a direct order to do otherwise. On Homeworld, you were thought better than her, yet it's highly unlikely she would ever listen to a Gem who wasn't involved in the militia.

 _I thought I was a brute. But you – you're a monster._ The harsh outlines of Jasper's accusations prod at you, desperate and brittle, ash heaped beneath them.

She will be back.

"Yeah-huh, _that_ good," Steven says. "It was amazing! You were like a superhero or something today."

You glance back at Dr. Drakken, remembering the day you first heard the words _super_ and _villain_ fused. It's not hard to figure out that this must be its counterpoint.

Drakken grins right along with Steven, each of his teeth a polished stone. "This child speaks the truth. I'm going to get my sleeping bag set up. I'm _bushed_." A yellow blossom springs from the top of his head, and he sighs. "If you'll pardon the expression," he says to it.

You have never heard _bush_ used to mean anything other than a plant, but as you watch Drakken, a yawn digs his chin deeply into his neck. "Tired?" you guess.

"Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner!" Drakken says, as though you have climbed out of an arena with your opponent's gem cradled in your hands.

"Yeah, I'm bushed too," Steven says. "And I'd better get home before Pearl starts to worry or anything."

You snort. "Does she ever _not_ worry?"

Steven's laughter is muted, unsure of its existence. His voice, however, isn't offended as he says, "Well, good night, Lapis. See you around, Drakken."

After Steven warps himself back to the Crystal Gems' fortress, you follow Dr. Drakken into the barn. Peridot is crouched in one corner, surrounded by the scraps of metal and technology that make up her Homeworld. You look hard at her, trying to see the Gem with the wide, ingenuous eyes as the one responsible for your inquisition, and you simply cannot. Her crimes are nothing more than steam on Earth's horizon. You surprise yourself by returning the brief hand-flap she gives you.

Drakken spreads his sleeping bag on the high shelf with great ceremony, making noises of annoyance as he attempts to smooth small mounds from the fabric. No sooner does he stamp one down than another rises to take its place elsewhere. Finally, he throws himself onto the bag and drags his arms up and down as though treading water; he rises again with a wrenching of static.

"Nngghk. . . good enough," Drakken proclaims. He looks at you and hops from foot to foot, seemingly doubtful that the earth can handle both at the same time. "Lapis – before I go to bed – would it be all right if I prayed for you?"

You nod in silence, though your powers sing inside you. No one has ever asked their god to protect you before.

Dr. Drakken crouches above the peeling wood of the barn floor and fastens his fingers around yours, scarcely covering them. His head slants over the curled fist the two of you create. He speaks at a lower pitch than usual, and under the weight of it his buoy-words swell, a submissive downturn at the end of each sentence.

"Amen," Drakken finishes as he opens his round, watering eyes.

You are released into a sudden clarity , as when you finally breach the layer of clouds that patrol Earth's lower atmosphere and you can see the size of it all: so great and so small all at once, so near and yet so far away, everything visible yet so little identifiable. You don't feel safe - a feeling that may well be unrecognizable anyway.

But you don't feel monstrous, either.

Drakken hitches into his sleeping bag, his throat grunting and his back clicking as he searches for a more comfortable position. "Good night. Promise you'll wake me up if anything happens?" he says in a hazed voice.

"Anything?" you say.

"Well, not _any_ thing." Drakken's warm, genuine fingers trace circles on the sleeping bag's blue-spangled surface. "Not if Peridot stubs her toe."

You hear yourself giggle, a sound that matches the shimmer you can feel in your stored-away wings.

"But if, you know, if Jasper shows up again. Or – ooh! – in case a meteor shower starts." There is an upswing to every one of Drakken's facets. "I've always wanted to see one of those! Promise?"

"I promise," you say with a smile. "Good night, Drakken."

Drakken relaxes, an action that appears to halve his height. You watch as his eyes close and his face coasts into sleep. It no longer frightens you, not after you made your own safe descent across Mama Lipsky's lap.

He breathes in a cycle, more disciplined than anything he does while conscious. You listen to it for an Earth-time that you forget to measure, peering up into the barn's rafters. The longer you listen, the more Jasper dims in your mind, until all is burned away but the feeble, bare framework of her growling.

You blow on the ashes and scatter them across the sea.

* * *

Dr. Drakken awakens the next morning to a kink somewhere in his lumbar region and the faintest filaments of light scattered through a barn window. For a moment, he is puzzled – he doesn't usually wake up in barns – before the events of the previous day come wiggling back in. Though his eyes are still fuzzy and gunked at the edges, his mind sees everything clearly, from Peridot's never-ending supply of capital letters to the way Lapis's gaze flitted away from his when she admitted to having considered Jasper's offer.

If you could label such a thing – part cajoling and part threat – as an "offer."

Drakken catches his upper lip curling at the corner, and he shakes it back down. His focus needs to be on Lapis and her safety. He cannot waste any energy fantasizing about introducing Jasper to the many Doomsday devices he built in his supervillain days. Especially since most of them have been disassembled by now.

They'd all be too good for her, anyway.

Outside, Lapis is perched on the edge of the mini-pond. When she sees Drakken come out, she skips a foot across the surface of the water, splashing him.

 _Okay – so she's feeling better._

The relief Drakken breathes couldn't be more profound if his back had popped, too. Wiping a few droplets from his belt, he sinks down beside Lapis and can't help checking her wrist for signs of damage. He can still see it, as he saw it in all his dreams last night – the giant thumbprint centered right where her pulse would pound if she had one.

But Lapis's skin is a smooth, unbroken sheet of sea-blue. Almost as if Jasper has never touched it.

"Good morning," Drakken says, clearing some dawn-roughness from his throat.

Lapis gives him the smile that makes everything else float away. "Good morning," she says. "Did you sleep all right?"

Drakken nods. "Did you…stay up all right?" he asks, and then grunts when he recognizes how supremely _stupid_ that sounds. "Errr, that is to say – was it okay? Being awake? By yourself?"

"Well, I wasn't _totally_ by myself." Lapis's shrug is so light and airy, Drakken half-expects the wings to make an appearance. "I mean…I had Peridot."

Drakken can feel his ponytail heading for a perk. "So…you two are getting along now?"

"Better," Lapis says. Another shrug. "I told her I didn't like being called Lazuli. She said she'd try to remember to call me Lapis."

Joy cartwheels through Drakken. "Lapis! Lapis, Lapis, Lapis, Lapis, Lapis," is all he can say, again and again, as if he's backing up Peridot. The noise of it startles a bird from a nearby tree, and as it flees it caws a scolding at Drakken, who couldn't possibly care less. "Lapis! That's amazing! I – Boy, I really feel like we should make badges or something. Something to commemorate all the progress you've made."

Drakken envisions a Girl Scouts sash swiping diagonally across Lapis's bare midriff, adorned with the I-Don't-Want-To-Hate-My-Enemies badge and the Risked-My-Life-To-Save-A-Friend badge and the Gave-Somebody-A-Second-Chance badge. It is a picture he wishes he could capture and download as a screensaver, because it is just so lovely.

Lapis's chin rises a modest notch-and-a-half. Drakken dips his own, much larger, down to meet it.

"Should I give you the chemical breakdown of exactly how jasper differs from lapis lazuli?" he begins.

Lapis giggles. Hers is a little girl's laugh, wispy yet rich, bouncing with both the sprightliness and the power of the ocean. "You're going to keep telling me that, aren't you?" she says.

"Yes, I am," Drakken says stubbornly. He recalls how Lapis's body slumped as she relayed Jasper's "monster" statement, and his chest is nearly split by sadness – sadness with a serrated edge of anger. "Because you need to believe it. You've been trying so hard to do the right thing. Jasper wouldn't know the right thing if it bit her on the left leg."

Lapis releases her delightfully unladylike snort. "Does the right thing _usually_ bite people on the left leg?"

"Sometimes," Drakken says. "In my case, it rocketed me around the inside of my Alpine lair and then slammed me face-first into a puddle of Hydro-Pollinator goo, but everyone's experience is different."

Too late, Drakken realizes Lapis probably didn't understand several of the words in that sentence. But if she is baffled, she doesn't show it. She just dunks her feet back into the pond, and the water immediately swirls around them in a protective clutch. Drakken doesn't blame it.

"Over and over, until you believe it," he says again.

Lapis glances his way and does the thing that has grown even more meaningful since the Malachite incident: the thing where she lifts her face and peels the plaster back from it, inviting him to peer in on her secret little treasures. Drakken takes one look, and immediately his curiosity swamps him. He wants to know everything. Just how significant was an "Elite" on Homeworld? Who sent her to Earth, and why, and why didn't they keep closer tabs on her? What paints the shame on her when she talks about the war she wasn't part of? How do her wings hold their shape when they're so obviously liquid, and how does she still manage to manipulate them?

But he glances down at the top of her spry little hairdo and he swallows them, knowing that she is not ready to tell him yet. Drakken is familiar with the salt-in-the-wound feeling – much more familiar than he wants Lapis to ever be.

He's not used to being this unselfish. It's almost starting to scare him.

"I'm starting to," Lapis says. There is the faintest spark of hope in her voice – a voice that is like a summer picnic when it isn't heavy with worry.

Drakken goes ahead and breaks into a grin, even before he stands up and his back finally pops. "Well, starting is a good…start. Ngggh. I should have thought that sentence through better." He reaches a hand down to Lapis. "Will you be all right if I go back hom – back to Middleton now?"

Lapis's eyes flicker appreciation, and she nods slowly. "I think so." A shy navy blush scoots across her cheeks. "Thanks for coming. I'm sorry if it was any trouble."

"Oh – for the love of – enough apologizing, already! Honestly, Shego never apologizes to me; you never stop. Is there no happy medium?" Drakken props his hands on his hips. "Promise to call me if you need me?"

This time Lapis's nod is even slower and completely devoid of mischief. "I don't have a phone, though," she says. Apologetically.

She really needs to work on that.

"I have a tablet now," someone nasally pipes up.

Peridot comes around the corner of the barn, literally bright-eyed and figuratively bushy-tailed. She claps her hands behind her back and gazes up at Lapis in adoration.

"She has a tablet now," Lapis says to Drakken with a wry note. The words sound as though they are tiptoeing, and her smile is diluted rather than completely dissolved. He watches the tiny features bundle together – not unfriendly, they nevertheless appear too tight, as though the tiniest deviation from her now-bland expression will bust a seam somewhere.

For Drakken, however, Peridot's enthusiasm is contagious. He can't quite contain a chortle when she bobs forward on her toes and says, "I can help her contact you!"

"Marvelous, Peridot." Drakken tilts his head toward her. "All right, ladies. Here I go to spend another day utilizing my awesome brainpower for the good of humanity…and anyone else who needs it."

"Same here," Peridot says, and Drakken appreciates the science major's stiff but earnest and appropriate use of slang. She arches her neck wisely and sighs. "A Crystal Gem's work is never done."

Lapis's eyes sparkle and roll at the same time, something Drakken didn't know could be achieved. "'Bye, Drakken," she says, and then she steps forward and surprises him further with a hug. He returns it, careful to keep his fumbling fingers clear of her gem.

Her face is periwinkle in the rising sunlight, and she feels almost breakable inside his hug. Yet the twiggy little arms that latch behind him have a fierce strength to them, and Drakken makes a conscious effort to believe in it.

As the hovercraft takes flight, Drakken twists back one last time to wave over his shoulder. Peridot waves back with her whole arm, nearly toppling herself over, and Lapis politely twiddles her hand back and forth before sitting back down. Peridot settles in with her and tries to get her own legs, as small as a pair of mushroom stems, to dangle into the water too.

Lapis does not flinch away, and for a screensaver-worthy moment, that is the only thing that counts.


End file.
